Zipkin reporter

Zipkin is a distributed tracing system with support for OpenTracing.

Cinnamon Zipkin dependency

First make sure that your build is configured to use the Cinnamon Agent.

To enable the Zipkin reporter, add the following dependencies to your build:

sbt
libraryDependencies += Cinnamon.library.cinnamonOpenTracing
libraryDependencies += Cinnamon.library.cinnamonOpenTracingZipkin
Maven
<dependency>
  <groupId>com.lightbend.cinnamon</groupId>
  <artifactId>cinnamon-opentracing_2.13</artifactId>
  <version>2.19.3</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>com.lightbend.cinnamon</groupId>
  <artifactId>cinnamon-opentracing-zipkin</artifactId>
  <version>2.19.3</version>
</dependency>
Gradle
dependencies {
    implementation group: 'com.lightbend.cinnamon', name: 'cinnamon-opentracing_2.13', version: '2.19.3'
    implementation group: 'com.lightbend.cinnamon', name: 'cinnamon-opentracing-zipkin', version: '2.19.3'
}

Zipkin configuration

The default Zipkin sender is the URL connection sender, which can be used for sending trace spans directly to the Zipkin API. This sender can be configured. On the Example tab there is a configuration that sets a different endpoint for the Zipkin trace span collector by configuring the endpoint setting:

Required

There is nothing to configure if you want to use the default Zipkin settings that will communicate with localhost on port 9411 using the URL connection sender.

Example
cinnamon.opentracing {
  zipkin {
    url-connection {
      endpoint = "http://my.zipkin.host:9411/api/v2/spans"
      encoding = "proto3"
    }
  }
}
Reference
cinnamon.opentracing {
  zipkin {

    # Zipkin API Version (1 or 2)
    # It is used to select a proper version of JSON encoding (JSON_V1 or JSON_V2)
    # and to inform about a possible inconsistency between Zipkin API version and:
    #  - supported encoding format or
    #  - the endpoint URL when used with the `url-connection` sender.
    api-version = 2

    # How long to block for in-flight spans to send out-of-process on close.
    close-timeout = 1s

    # Instead of sending one message at a time, spans are bundled into messages, up to `message-max-bytes`.
    # This timeout ensures that spans are not stuck in an incomplete message.
    # Note: this timeout starts when the first unsent span is reported.
    message-timeout = 1s

    # Flush interval for trace span reporter. Must be greater than zero.
    # DEPRECATED! This is an obsolete setting. Use `message-timeout` instead.
    flush-interval = null

    # Maximum backlog of spans reported vs sent.
    queued-max-spans = 10000

    # Max queue size of trace span reporter.
    # Maximum backlog of spans reported vs sent.
    # DEPRECATED! This is an obsolete setting. Use `queued-max-spans` instead.
    max-queue-size = null

    # Maximum backlog of span bytes reported vs sent. Default 1% of heap.
    queued-max-bytes = null

    # Zipkin sender to use for reporting trace spans
    sender = url-connection

    # Maximum bytes sendable per message including overhead.
    # Defaults to, and is limited by `sender.message-max-bytes`.
    message-max-bytes = null

    # URL connection sender for reporting directly to a Zipkin API endpoint
    url-connection {

      # Zipkin API POST URL
      endpoint = "http://localhost:9411/api/v2/spans"

      # Encoding to use for trace spans:
      #   proto3 - default encoding requires Zipkin 2.8+, endpoint should point to `api/v2`
      #            NOTE: When using Zipkin format to report to Jaeger set the encoding to `json` because Jaeger doesn't support `proto3` Zipkin v2 format.
      #   json   - encoding to make it work with Zipkin prior 2.8
      #            when using with Zipkin 2, `endpoint` should point to `api/v2` and `api-version` should be set to 2
      #   thrift - DEPRECATED and will be removed in future versions!
      encoding = "proto3"

      # Timeout for establishing URL connection
      connect-timeout = 10s

      # Timeout for connection reads
      read-timeout = 60s

      # Whether GZIP compression is enabled
      compression = true

      # Maximum bytes sendable per message including overhead.
      message-max-bytes = 5MiB
    }

  }
}
Note

These settings are defined in the reference.conf. You only need to specify any of these settings when you want to override the defaults.

See the following sections for configuring the Zipkin sender for Kafka or Scribe.

Zipkin format configuration for Jaeger

Jaeger supports Zipkin format except for proto3 encoding. When using Zipkin format to report to Jaeger set the encoding to json.

cinnamon.opentracing {
  zipkin {
    url-connection {
      encoding = "json"
    }
  }
}

Zipkin Kafka sender

Zipkin can be configured to send traces to a Kafka topic. This sender supports Kafka 0.10.2+.

To enable the Zipkin Kafka sender, add the following dependencies to your build:

sbt
libraryDependencies += Cinnamon.library.cinnamonOpenTracing
libraryDependencies += Cinnamon.library.cinnamonOpenTracingZipkinKafka
Maven
<dependency>
  <groupId>com.lightbend.cinnamon</groupId>
  <artifactId>cinnamon-opentracing_2.13</artifactId>
  <version>2.19.3</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>com.lightbend.cinnamon</groupId>
  <artifactId>cinnamon-opentracing-zipkin-kafka</artifactId>
  <version>2.19.3</version>
</dependency>
Gradle
dependencies {
    implementation group: 'com.lightbend.cinnamon', name: 'cinnamon-opentracing_2.13', version: '2.19.3'
    implementation group: 'com.lightbend.cinnamon', name: 'cinnamon-opentracing-zipkin-kafka', version: '2.19.3'
}

You can then configure the Zipkin reporter to use the Kafka sender. You must specify the Kafka bootstrap servers to use. You can also override any of the producer configs using the properties configuration section:

Required
cinnamon.opentracing {
  zipkin {
    sender = kafka

    kafka {
      bootstrap-servers = ["my.kafka.host1:9091", "my.kafka.host2:9091"]
      encoding = "proto3"
    }
  }
}
Reference
cinnamon.opentracing {
  zipkin {
    kafka {
      # Initial set of kafka servers to connect to (must be specified)
      bootstrap-servers = []

      # Kafka topic to send trace spans to
      topic = "zipkin"

      # Encoding to use for trace spans:
      #   json   - default encoding to make it work with Zipkin prior 2.8
      #   proto3 - requires Zipkin 2.8+
      #   thrift - DEPRECATED and will be removed in future versions!
      encoding = "json"

      # Property overrides for producer configs (https://kafka.apache.org/documentation.html#producerconfigs)
      properties {}

      # Maximum size of messages
      max-message-size = 1MB
    }
  }
}
Note

These settings are defined in the reference.conf. You only need to specify any of these settings when you want to override the defaults.

Zipkin Scribe sender

Zipkin can be configured to send traces to Scribe.

To enable the Zipkin Scribe sender, add the following dependencies to your build:

sbt
libraryDependencies += Cinnamon.library.cinnamonOpenTracing
libraryDependencies += Cinnamon.library.cinnamonOpenTracingZipkinScribe
Maven
<dependency>
  <groupId>com.lightbend.cinnamon</groupId>
  <artifactId>cinnamon-opentracing_2.13</artifactId>
  <version>2.19.3</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>com.lightbend.cinnamon</groupId>
  <artifactId>cinnamon-opentracing-zipkin-scribe</artifactId>
  <version>2.19.3</version>
</dependency>
Gradle
dependencies {
    implementation group: 'com.lightbend.cinnamon', name: 'cinnamon-opentracing_2.13', version: '2.19.3'
    implementation group: 'com.lightbend.cinnamon', name: 'cinnamon-opentracing-zipkin-scribe', version: '2.19.3'
}

You can then configure the Zipkin reporter to use the Scribe sender. On the Example tab there is a configuration that changes the Scribe endpoint using the host and port settings:

Required
cinnamon.opentracing {
  zipkin {
    sender = scribe
  }
}
Example
cinnamon.opentracing {
  zipkin {
    sender = scribe

    scribe {
      host = "my.scribe.host"
      port = 9410
    }
  }
}
Reference
cinnamon.opentracing {
  zipkin {
    scribe {
      # Host of Scribe trace collector
      host = "localhost"

      # Port of Scribe trace collector
      port = 9410

      # Timeout for socket reads
      socket-timeout = 60s

      # Timeout for connections
      connect-timeout = 10s

      # Maximum size of messages (scribe default is 16384000 bytes)
      max-message-size = 16000KiB
    }
  }
}
Note

These settings are defined in the reference.conf. You only need to specify any of these settings when you want to override the defaults.

Zipkin B3 propagation

Zipkin-compatible tracing systems usually propagate the trace context using B3 headers, such as X-B3-TraceId. To integrate with other HTTP services that do not use Cinnamon or Jaeger-based tracing but do have Zipkin integration, the Tracer can be configured to inject and extract the trace context using B3 headers.

You can configure the tracer to use B3 propagation, in addition to the default Jaeger propagation:

cinnamon.opentracing.tracer {
  propagations += b3-propagation
}

Zipkin W3C propagation

You can configure the tracer to use W3C propagation, in addition to the default Jaeger propagation:

cinnamon.opentracing.tracer {
  propagations += w3c-propagation
}

Running Zipkin

See the Zipkin documentation for running Zipkin. The Zipkin quickstart shows how to run Zipkin locally for development and testing.

Here’s what an example actor trace in Zipkin looks like:

Zipkin trace

Further tracer configuration

The OpenTracing integration for both Jaeger and Zipkin build on the Jaeger client. The tracer supports the following configuration:

Setting a service name for each node is useful. The service name can be configured specifically for tracing using the service-name setting (example below) or otherwise this will be based on the application name from the shared Cinnamon metadata. You can use the cinnamon.application setting to configure the same name for both metrics and tracing.

Global tags can be added to the tracer, which will be added to all trace spans (but note that global tracer tag keys are automatically prefixed with tracer.). See trace span tags for adding tags to specific types of spans, or all spans created by Cinnamon.

Note

Tracing can produce a very high volume of data, so sampling is applied (at the beginning of a trace). The sampler used, and its settings, can be configured. The default sampler is a rate-limiting sampler that captures up to 10 traces per second.

On the Example tab, there is a configuration that sets the service-name to my-component, sets a custom environment tag to staging, and configures a rate-limiting sampler with a maximum of 25 traces per second:

Required

There is nothing to configure if you want to use the default OpenTracing settings that will use the rate limiting sampler with 10 traces per second.

Example
cinnamon.opentracing {
  tracer {
    service-name = "my-component"

    tags {
      environment = "staging"
    }

    sampler = rate-limiting-sampler

    rate-limiting-sampler {
      max-traces-per-second = 25
    }
  }
}
Reference
cinnamon.opentracing {
  tracer {

    # Service name for this application, defaults to the `cinnamon.application` identifier when not set
    service-name = null

    # Enables AWS X-Ray Trace ID format
    # NOTE: Currently only Jaeger and Zipkin reporters support this
    aws-xray-trace-id-format = off

    # Tags added to all trace spans (key:value pairs)
    tags {}

    # Trace sampler to use
    sampler = rate-limiting-sampler

    rate-limiting-sampler {
      # Maximum number of sampled traces per second
      max-traces-per-second = 10
    }

    probabilistic-sampler {
      # Probabilistic sampling rate, between 0.0 and 1.0
      sampling-rate = 0.001
    }

    const-sampler {
      # Constant decision on whether to sample traces
      # Note: this sampler is NOT recommended for production
      decision = true
    }

    # Propagation codecs for cross-process tracing (multiple codecs can be active)
    # Include B3 propgation with: `cinnamon.opentracing.tracer.propagations += b3-propagation`
    propagations = [jaeger-propagation]

    jaeger-propagation {
      # Whether to URL encode the trace context for HTTP header propagation
      http-header-url-encoding = on
    }

    b3-propagation {
    }

    w3c-propagation {
    }

    # Log trace spans with SLF4J (can be used for debugging the tracer)
    # Set `cinnamon.opentracing.tracer.reporters += trace-logging`
    trace-logging {
      # Name of SLF4J logger to use when logging
      logger = "cinnamon.opentracing.Tracer"
    }

  }
}
Note

These settings are defined in the reference.conf. You only need to specify any of these settings when you want to override the defaults.