Distributed Tracing

Distributed tracing tracks requests as they flow through distributed systems, helping identify bottlenecks and failures.

What is Distributed Tracing?

Distributed tracing tracks requests as they propagate through distributed systems, providing visibility into the full request lifecycle across multiple services.

Tracing Concepts

Trace (full request journey), Span (single operation), Context propagation, Sampling.

Common Misconceptions

"Tracing captures everything" - Sampling is common
"Tracing replaces logging" - Complementary
"Tracing is only for microservices" - Useful for any distributed system