Implementing distributed tracing in Jaeger - Sample App

Sample HotRod application

The sample HotRod application is a demo ride-sharing application. It shows four locations and by clicking on a location you call a ride to that location.

The sample HotRod application is a demo ride-sharing application. It shows four locations, and by clicking on a location, you call a ride to that location.

Steps to get started with Jaeger distributed tracing

In order to see how Jaeger is used for distributed tracing, let's run the demo application HotRod and see its traces using Jaeger.

Steps to run HotRod application with Jaeger:

The recommended way to run Jaeger is with a Docker image. If you don't have docker installed, install it from the official Docker website.

The HotRod application is implemented in Go, so you need to install Go.

Run Jaeger backend as an all-in-one Docker image with the following command:

docker run -d -p6831:6831/udp -p16686:16686 jaegertracing/all-in-one:latest

Once the container starts, you will be able to access Jaeger's UI at http://localhost:16686/search

Clone Jaeger's GitHub repo in local and change directory

git clone https://github.com/jaegertracing/jaeger.git

cd jaeger

Run the sample HotRod application

go run ./examples/hotrod/main.go all

You will be able to access the app UI at http://127.0.0.1:8080/

To see traces on Jaeger, we need to generate some load. Click on different locations a number of times. When you access the Jaeger UI now, you can find the list of services along with its trace captured on Jaeger.

Jaeger also creates a dependency diagram by tracing how requests flow and shows it in the dashboard. From the dependency diagram, we can see that the HotRod application has four microservices and two databases.