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

title	description	weight	keywords	aliases	owner	test
OpenCensus Agent	Learn how to configure the proxies to send OpenCensus-formatted spans to OpenTelemetry Collector.	10	telemetry tracing opencensus opentelemetry span	/docs/tasks/opencensusagent-tracing.html	istio/wg-policies-and-telemetry-maintainers	yes

After completing this task, you will understand how to have your application participate in tracing with the OpenCensus Agent, export those traces to the OpenTelemetry collector, and have the OpenTelemetry collector export those spans to Jaeger.

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

{{< boilerplate before-you-begin-egress >}}

• Install Jaeger into your cluster.

• Deploy the Bookinfo sample application.

Configure tracing

If you used an IstioOperator CR to install Istio, add the following field to your configuration:

{{< text yaml >}} apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1 kind: IstioOperator spec: meshConfig: defaultProviders: tracing: - "opencensus" enableTracing: true extensionProviders: - name: "opencensus" opencensus: service: "opentelemetry-collector.istio-system.svc.cluster.local" port: 55678 context: - W3C_TRACE_CONTEXT {{< /text >}}

With this configuration Istio is installed with OpenCensus Agent as the default tracer. Trace data will be sent to an OpenTelemetry backend.

By default, Istio's OpenCensus Agent tracing will attempt to read and write 4 types of trace headers:

• B3,
• gRPC's binary trace header,
• W3C Trace Context,
• and Cloud Trace Context.

If you supply multiple values, the proxy will attempt to read trace headers in the specified order, using the first one that successfully parsed and writing all headers. This permits interoperability between services that use different headers, e.g. one service that propagates B3 headers and one that propagates W3C Trace Context headers can participate in the same trace. In this example we only use W3C Trace Context.

In the default profile the sampling rate is 1%. Increase it to 100% using the Telemetry API:

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF apiVersion: telemetry.istio.io/v1alpha1 kind: Telemetry metadata: name: mesh-default namespace: istio-system spec: tracing:

• randomSamplingPercentage: 100.00 EOF {{< /text >}}

Deploy OpenTelemetry Collector

OpenTelemetry collector supports exporting traces to several backends by default in the core distribution. Other backends are available in the contrib distribution of OpenTelemetry collector.

Deploy and configure the collector to receive and export spans to the Jaeger instance:

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF apiVersion: v1 kind: ConfigMap metadata: name: opentelemetry-collector namespace: istio-system labels: app: opentelemetry-collector data: config: | receivers: opencensus: endpoint: 0.0.0.0:55678 processors: memory_limiter: limit_mib: 100 spike_limit_mib: 10 check_interval: 5s exporters: zipkin: # Export via zipkin for easy querying endpoint: http://zipkin.istio-system.svc:9411/api/v2/spans logging: loglevel: debug extensions: health_check: port: 13133 service: extensions: - health_check pipelines: traces: receivers: - opencensus processors: - memory_limiter exporters: - zipkin - logging

apiVersion: v1 kind: Service metadata: name: opentelemetry-collector namespace: istio-system labels: app: opentelemetry-collector spec: type: ClusterIP selector: app: opentelemetry-collector ports: - name: grpc-opencensus port: 55678 protocol: TCP targetPort: 55678

apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: opentelemetry-collector namespace: istio-system labels: app: opentelemetry-collector spec: replicas: 1 selector: matchLabels: app: opentelemetry-collector template: metadata: labels: app: opentelemetry-collector spec: containers: - name: opentelemetry-collector image: "otel/opentelemetry-collector:0.49.0" imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent command: - "/otelcol" - "--config=/conf/config.yaml" ports: - name: grpc-opencensus containerPort: 55678 protocol: TCP volumeMounts: - name: opentelemetry-collector-config mountPath: /conf readinessProbe: httpGet: path: / port: 13133 resources: requests: cpu: 40m memory: 100Mi volumes: - name: opentelemetry-collector-config configMap: name: opentelemetry-collector items: - key: config path: config.yaml EOF {{< /text >}}

Access 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 Jaeger to the istio-system namespace:

{{< text bash >}} $ istioctl dashboard jaeger {{< /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 left-hand pane of the dashboard, select productpage.default from the Service drop-down list and click Find Traces:

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

3. Click on the most recent trace at the top to see the details corresponding to the latest request to /productpage:

   {{< image link="./istio-tracing-details.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.

As you also configured logging exporter in OpenTelemetry Collector, you can see traces in the logs as well:

{{< text bash >}} $ kubectl -n istio-system logs deploy/opentelemetry-collector {{< /text >}}

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.

3. Remove the Jaeger addon:

   {{< text bash >}} $ kubectl delete -f {{< github_file >}}/samples/addons/jaeger.yaml {{< /text >}}

4. Remove the OpenTelemetry Collector:

   {{< text bash >}} $ kubectl delete -n istio-system cm opentelemetry-collector $ kubectl delete -n istio-system svc opentelemetry-collector $ kubectl delete -n istio-system deploy opentelemetry-collector {{< /text >}}

5. Remove, or set to "", the meshConfig.extensionProviders and meshConfig.defaultProviders setting in your Istio install configuration.

6. Remove the telemetry resource:

   {{< text bash >}} $ kubectl delete telemetries.telemetry.istio.io -n istio-system mesh-default {{< /text >}}