zipkin

Zipkin Input Plugin

This service plugin implements the Zipkin HTTP server to gather trace and timing data needed to troubleshoot latency problems in microservice architectures.

[!CRITICAL] This plugin produces high cardinality data, which when not controlled for will cause high load on your database. Please make sure to filter the produced metrics or configure your database to avoid cardinality issues!

⭐ Telegraf v1.4.0 🏷️ cloud 💻 all

Service Input

This plugin is a service input. Normal plugins gather metrics determined by the interval setting. Service plugins start a service to listen and wait for metrics or events to occur. Service plugins have two key differences from normal plugins:

1. The global or plugin specific interval setting may not apply
2. The CLI options of --test, --test-wait, and --once may not produce output for this plugin

Global configuration options

In addition to the plugin-specific configuration settings, plugins support additional global and plugin configuration settings. These settings are used to modify metrics, tags, and field or create aliases and configure ordering, etc. See the CONFIGURATION.md for more details.

Configuration

# Gather data from a Zipkin server including trace and timing data
[[inputs.zipkin]]
  ## URL path for span data
  # path = "/api/v1/spans"

  ## Port on which Telegraf listens
  # port = 9411

  ## Maximum duration before timing out read of the request
  # read_timeout = "10s"
  ## Maximum duration before timing out write of the response
  # write_timeout = "10s"

The plugin accepts spans in JSON or thrift if the Content-Type is application/json or application/x-thrift, respectively. If Content-Type is not set, then the plugin assumes it is JSON format.

Metrics

This plugin uses Annotations tags and fields to track data from spans

• TRACE is a set of spans that share a single root span. Traces are built by collecting all Spans that share a traceId.

• SPAN is a set of Annotations and BinaryAnnotations that correspond to a particular RPC.

• Annotations create a metric for each annotation & binary annotation of a span. This records an occurrence in time at the beginning and end of each request.

  Annotations may have the following values:

  • CS (client start) marks the beginning of the span, a request is made.
  • SR (server receive) marks the point in time the server receives the request and starts processing it. Network latency & clock jitters distinguish this from CS.
  • SS (server send) marks the point in time the server is finished processing and sends a request back to client. The difference to SR denotes the amount of time it took to process the request.
  • CR (client receive) marks the end of the span, with the client receiving the response from server. RPC is considered complete with this annotation.

All metrics contain the following fields:

• duration_ns the time in nanoseconds between the end and beginning of a span

Tags

• id the 64-bit ID of the span.
• parent_id an ID associated with a particular child span. If there is no child span, parent_id is equal to id
• trace_id the 64-bit or 128-bit ID of a particular trace. Every span in a trace uses this ID.
• name defines a span

Annotations have these additional tags

• service_name defines a service
• annotation the value of an annotation
• endpoint_host listening IPv4 address and, if present, port

Binary Annotations have these additional tag

• service_name defines a service
• annotation the value of an annotation
• endpoint_host listening IPv4 address and, if present, port
• annotation_key label describing the annotation

Example Output

The Zipkin data

[
    {
        "trace_id": 2505404965370368069,
        "name": "Child",
        "id": 8090652509916334619,
        "parent_id": 22964302721410078,
        "annotations": [],
        "binary_annotations": [
            {
                "key": "lc",
                "value": "dHJpdmlhbA==",
                "annotation_type": "STRING",
                "host": {
                    "ipv4": 2130706433,
                    "port": 0,
                    "service_name": "trivial"
                }
            }
        ],
        "timestamp": 1498688360851331,
        "duration": 53106
    },
    {
        "trace_id": 2505404965370368069,
        "name": "Child",
        "id": 103618986556047333,
        "parent_id": 22964302721410078,
        "annotations": [],
        "binary_annotations": [
            {
                "key": "lc",
                "value": "dHJpdmlhbA==",
                "annotation_type": "STRING",
                "host": {
                    "ipv4": 2130706433,
                    "port": 0,
                    "service_name": "trivial"
                }
            }
        ],
        "timestamp": 1498688360904552,
        "duration": 50410
    },
    {
        "trace_id": 2505404965370368069,
        "name": "Parent",
        "id": 22964302721410078,
        "annotations": [
            {
                "timestamp": 1498688360851325,
                "value": "Starting child #0",
                "host": {
                    "ipv4": 2130706433,
                    "port": 0,
                    "service_name": "trivial"
                }
            },
            {
                "timestamp": 1498688360904545,
                "value": "Starting child #1",
                "host": {
                    "ipv4": 2130706433,
                    "port": 0,
                    "service_name": "trivial"
                }
            },
            {
                "timestamp": 1498688360954992,
                "value": "A Log",
                "host": {
                    "ipv4": 2130706433,
                    "port": 0,
                    "service_name": "trivial"
                }
            }
        ],
        "binary_annotations": [
            {
                "key": "lc",
                "value": "dHJpdmlhbA==",
                "annotation_type": "STRING",
                "host": {
                    "ipv4": 2130706433,
                    "port": 0,
                    "service_name": "trivial"
                }
            }
        ],
        "timestamp": 1498688360851318,
        "duration": 103680
    }
]

generated the following metrics

zipkin,id=7047c59776af8a1b,name=child,parent_id=5195e96239641e,service_name=trivial,trace_id=22c4fc8ab3669045 duration_ns=53106000i 1498688360851331000
zipkin,annotation=trivial,annotation_key=lc,endpoint_host=127.0.0.1,id=7047c59776af8a1b,name=child,parent_id=5195e96239641e,service_name=trivial,trace_id=22c4fc8ab3669045 duration_ns=53106000i 1498688360851331000
zipkin,id=17020eb55a8bfe5,name=child,parent_id=5195e96239641e,service_name=trivial,trace_id=22c4fc8ab3669045 duration_ns=50410000i 1498688360904552000
zipkin,annotation=trivial,annotation_key=lc,endpoint_host=127.0.0.1,id=17020eb55a8bfe5,name=child,parent_id=5195e96239641e,service_name=trivial,trace_id=22c4fc8ab3669045 duration_ns=50410000i 1498688360904552000
zipkin,id=5195e96239641e,name=parent,parent_id=5195e96239641e,service_name=trivial,trace_id=22c4fc8ab3669045 duration_ns=103680000i 1498688360851318000
zipkin,annotation=Starting\ child\ #0,endpoint_host=127.0.0.1,id=5195e96239641e,name=parent,parent_id=5195e96239641e,service_name=trivial,trace_id=22c4fc8ab3669045 duration_ns=103680000i 1498688360851318000
zipkin,annotation=Starting\ child\ #1,endpoint_host=127.0.0.1,id=5195e96239641e,name=parent,parent_id=5195e96239641e,service_name=trivial,trace_id=22c4fc8ab3669045 duration_ns=103680000i 1498688360851318000
zipkin,annotation=A\ Log,endpoint_host=127.0.0.1,id=5195e96239641e,name=parent,parent_id=5195e96239641e,service_name=trivial,trace_id=22c4fc8ab3669045 duration_ns=103680000i 1498688360851318000
zipkin,annotation=trivial,annotation_key=lc,endpoint_host=127.0.0.1,id=5195e96239641e,name=parent,parent_id=5195e96239641e,service_name=trivial,trace_id=22c4fc8ab3669045 duration_ns=103680000i 1498688360851318000