distributed-tracing

Distributed traces are propagated across microservice boundaries by initializing the OpenTelemetry SDK and ensuring HTTP, gRPC, and queue calls automatically forward the shared trace context to a centralized collector for end-to-end visibility.

Distributed tracing is used to diagnose latency bottlenecks and map dependencies by correlating requests across service boundaries, enabling teams to visualize slow services and correlate traces with logs and metrics for performance analysis.

OpenTelemetry automatic instrumentation is set up by initializing the SDK in each service with proper resource attributes like service.name and deployment.environment, which automatically produces shared trace contexts for HTTP, gRPC, and queues.

Distributed tracing works with serverless components and message queues by applying OpenTelemetry automatic instrumentation to propagate trace context across these boundaries, ensuring cross-service correlation and dependency mapping.

Resource attributes like service.name, service.version, and deployment.environment are required for trace correlation because they provide the necessary contextual metadata to identify and group spans correctly within the centralized OTEL collector backend.

Manual spans can be created for business logic alongside automatic instrumentation by using stable naming and semantic conventions, allowing precise tracking of specific operations within the broader distributed trace context.