Implementing distributed tracing

Distributed tracing helps you understand the journey of a request through various IT systems. In the context of microservices, distributed tracing helps you understand the flow of requests through various microservices, helps you to diagnose any issues a request might be encountering, and helps you quickly diagnose any failure or performance issues.

In Istio, you can enable distributed tracing without needing to make any changes in application code, provided your application forwards all tracing headers to upstream services. Istio supports integrations with various distributed tracing systems; Jaeger is one such supported system, which is also provided as an add-on with Istio. Istio distributed tracing is built upon Envoy, where tracing information is sent directly to the tracing backend from Envoy. The tracing information comprises x-request-id, x-b3-trace-id, x-b3-span-id, x-b3-parent-spanid, x-b3-sampled, x-b3-flags, and b3. These custom headers...