Instrument Distributed Tracing

Implement OpenTelemetry distributed tracing to track requests across microservices and identify performance bottlenecks.

When to Use

• Debugging latency issues in distributed systems with multiple services
• Understanding request flow and dependencies between microservices
• Identifying slow database queries or external API calls within a transaction
• Correlating traces with logs and metrics for root cause analysis
• Measuring end-to-end latency from user request to response
• Migrating from legacy tracing systems (Zipkin, Jaeger) to OpenTelemetry
• Establishing SLO compliance through detailed latency percentile tracking

Inputs

• Required: List of services to instrument (languages and frameworks)
• Required: Tracing backend choice (Jaeger, Tempo, Zipkin, or vendor SaaS)
• Optional: Existing instrumentation libraries (OpenTracing, Zipkin)