Distributed Tracing

Trace requests end-to-end as they flow through your distributed system. Understand latency bottlenecks, dependency chains, and failure points by correlating spans across multiple services.

Usage

Ask about implementing distributed tracing, propagating trace context, or analyzing traces to find performance issues.

Examples

• "How do I set up distributed tracing for my microservices?"
• "What sampling strategy should I use in production?"
• "How do I propagate trace context through a message queue?"

Guidelines

• Propagate W3C Trace Context headers across all service boundaries
• Use head-based sampling for predictable overhead, tail-based for error focus
• Add meaningful span attributes for effective trace analysis
• Instrument queue producers and consumers to maintain trace continuity
• Set up trace-based alerting for critical path latency thresholds