About the Traces app

Note

The Traces app is now available in beta release. You can expect frequent releases as new features are introduced as well as provide feedback as a customer during feature development.

From high-level overviews to granular insights into individual operations, the Traces app provides an interactive visualization of data flows in your system. It can help you analyze how different and fragmented data points can be seamlessly consolidated together, so you can better understand the performance of your services.

Filter data Copied

1. To filter data, click the dropdown menus and select a value for the following:

• Service namespace
• Service name
• Service instance ID
• Operation

Note

You can also search for a specific Trace ID by using the Lookup by trace ID search bar at the top of the screen.

2. Toggle the Highlight errors switch to highlight errors in the UI.

The UI will refresh to reflect your selected options.

Review timeline Copied

The Timeline chart provides a chronological overview of your trace data. Use this section to visualize the flow of events and quickly spot anomalies or performance trends over time.

• On the Timeline section, review the visualization of trace timelines, including duration and latency. You can select an option in the dropdown to examine latency metrics (such as p50, p95, p99).
• Examine the histogram in the Latency section to understand the distribution of trace latencies.

Review aggregated data Copied

Get a high-level summary of your system’s performance. The Aggregates section provides a consolidated view of errors and latency across different services and namespaces.

• Review the performance by namespace and service.
• Refer to the columns for Errors “and latency.

Review sample traces Copied

For a deeper dive into individual trace details, the Sample traces section provides specific instances of your data flows.

1. In the Sample traces section, locate the trace you want to inspect.
2. Click View trace for the specific trace.

The UI transitions to a detailed view for the trace, where you can switch between the Timeline and Graph tabs.

Timeline view Copied

The Timeline view provides a chronological breakdown, presenting the trace as a series of sequential operations (spans). Each row represents a distinct span.

• Review the details of each span, which lists its Operation, the Service it belongs to, and its Status (for example, Unset or OK).
• Check the bar in the chart for the corresponding time taken for the specific operation. The overall timeline provides a scale.
• Review the exact duration in milliseconds, which is shown next to the bar.

With this view, you can quickly identify operations that consume the most time within the overall trace.

Graph view Copied

The Graph view displays the trace in a typology, illustrating the dependencies and flow between different operations (spans). Each circle or node in the graph represents an operation (span).

• Review parent-child or dependency relationships between operations through the lines that connect the nodes.
• Review the duration and percentage contribution to the total trace duration of each node.

This view helps in tracing the path of a request through various services and understanding the order in which they are called.