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

title	description	weight	keywords	aliases
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

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

Before you begin

1. To set up Istio, follow the instructions in the Installation guide.

   Use the Helm chart with tracing enabled to set the --set tracing.enabled=true option and select the zipkin tracing provider with --set tracing.provider=zipkin.

2. Deploy the Bookinfo sample application.

Accessing the dashboard

1. To setup access to the tracing dashboard, use port forwarding:

   {{< text bash >}} kubectl -n istio-system port-forward(kubectl -n istio-system get pod -l app=istio-ingressgateway -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') 15032:15032 & {{< /text >}}

   Open your browser to http://localhost:15032.

2. To use a Kubernetes ingress, specify the Helm chart option --set tracing.ingress.enabled=true.

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.

2. From the top panel, select a service of interest (or 'all') from the Service Name drop-down list and click Find Traces:

   {{< image width="100%" ratio="52.68%" link="./istio-tracing-list-zipkin.png" caption="Tracing Dashboard"

   }}

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

   {{< image width="100%" ratio="36.32%" 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, istio-mixer, istio-policy.

Cleanup

1. Remove any kubectl port-forward processes that may still be running:

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

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