istio.io/content/en/docs/tasks/observability/distributed-tracing/zipkin/index.md

title	description	weight	keywords	aliases	owner	test
Zipkin	Learn how to configure the proxies to send tracing requests to Zipkin.	10	telemetry tracing zipkin span port-forwarding	/docs/tasks/zipkin-tracing.html	istio/wg-policies-and-telemetry-maintainers	yes

After completing this task, you understand how to have your application participate in tracing with Zipkin, regardless of the language, framework, or platform you use to build your application.

This task uses the Bookinfo sample as the example application.

To learn how Istio handles tracing, visit this task's overview.

Before you begin

1. Follow the Zipkin installation documentation to deploy Zipkin into your cluster.

2. When you enable tracing, you can set the sampling rate that Istio uses for tracing. Use the meshConfig.defaultConfig.tracing.sampling option during installation to set the sampling rate. The default sampling rate is 1%.

3. Deploy the Bookinfo sample application.

Accessing the dashboard

Remotely Accessing Telemetry Addons details how to configure access to the Istio addons through a gateway.

For testing (and temporary access), you may also use port-forwarding. Use the following, assuming you've deployed Zipkin to the istio-system namespace:

{{< text bash >}} $ istioctl dashboard zipkin {{< /text >}}

Generating traces using the Bookinfo sample

1. When the Bookinfo application is up and running, access http://$GATEWAY_URL/productpage one or more times to generate trace information.

   {{< boilerplate trace-generation >}}

2. From the search panel, click on the plus sign. Select serviceName from the first drop-down list, productpage.default from second drop-down, and then click the search icon:

   {{< image link="./istio-tracing-list-zipkin.png" caption="Tracing Dashboard" >}}

3. Click on the ISTIO-INGRESSGATEWAY search result to see the details corresponding to the latest request to /productpage:

   {{< image link="./istio-tracing-details-zipkin.png" caption="Detailed Trace View" >}}

4. The trace is comprised of a set of spans, where each span corresponds to a Bookinfo service, invoked during the execution of a /productpage request, or internal Istio component, for example: istio-ingressgateway.

Cleanup

1. Remove any istioctl processes that may still be running using control-C or:

   {{< text bash >}} $ killall istioctl {{< /text >}}

2. If you are not planning to explore any follow-on tasks, refer to the Bookinfo cleanup instructions to shutdown the application.