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 and then configure:

   a) a demo/test environment by setting the --set tracing.enabled=true and --set tracing.provider=zipkin Helm install options to enable tracing "out of the box"

   b) a production environment by referencing an existing Zipkin instance and then setting the --set global.tracer.zipkin.address=<zipkin-collector-service>.<zipkin-collector-namespace>:9411 Helm install option.

   {{< warning >}} When you enable tracing, you can set the sampling rate that Istio uses for tracing. Use the pilot.traceSampling option to set the sampling rate. The default sampling rate is 1%. {{< /warning >}}

2. Deploy the Bookinfo sample application.

Accessing the dashboard

Remotely Accessing Telemetry Addons details how to configure access to the Istio addons through a gateway. Alternatively, to use a Kubernetes ingress, specify the Helm chart option --set tracing.ingress.enabled=true during install.

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

{{< text bash >}} kubectl -n istio-control port-forward(kubectl -n istio-control get pod -l app=zipkin -o jsonpath='{.items[0].metadata.name}') 15032:9411 {{< /text >}}

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

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

   {{< image 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 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.