Skip to content

Zipkin 2.5
Compare
Choose a tag to compare
@codefromthecrypt codefromthecrypt released this 26 Feb 02:47
· 1515 commits to master since this release
2.5.0
3c03a75

Zipkin 2.5 formalizes the tag "http.route", used for metrics correlation and span naming conventions. It also presents zipkin-gcp (formerly known as stackdriver-zipkin) for continued progress towards Google Cloud Platform. Finally, it includes a number of updates you may not have noticed!

http.route tag

The "http.route", used for metrics correlation and span naming conventions. Here's the definition:

The route which a request matched or "" (empty string) if routing is supported,
but none matched. Ex "/objects/{objectId}". Often used as a span name when
known, with empty routes coercing to "not_found" or "redirected" based on
HTTP_STATUS_CODE("http.status_code").

Unlike HTTP_PATH("http.path"), this value is fixed cardinality, so is a safe
input to a span name function or a metrics dimension. Different formats are
possible. For example, the following are all valid route templates:
"/objects" "/objects/:objectId" "/objects/*"

A common use of http route is for an input to a span naming function. You'll notice that the following is intuitive to folks unfamiliar with specific frameworks:

screen shot 2018-02-23 at 9 47 55 pm

Here's a partial list of zipkin instrumentation which currently support route-based naming. More will happen soon, so keep an eye open for updates!

Credits

The idea of an http template tag is not a new idea. Our thrift definition mentioned this for a couple years, as a better alternative to http.path for cardinality. @takezoe's play-zipkin-tracing has always had template-based span names. We don't introduce tags regularly, as it takes several months to formalize (this certainly did). Introducing "http.route" now is "right timed" as projects such as census, kamon and micrometer integrate stats and tracing with common keys. It was also right timed as we had overwhelming support from our community.

To that end, a lot of thanks go to our extended community for input. For example, @ivantopo from Kamon helped with technical mapping in the scala play framework, which reduced the time spent investigating and integrating. @rakyll named the tag, ensuring it is consistently labeled in census. @jkschneider from micrometer spent a large amount of effort bringing forth some naming considerations and technical impacts for metrics. For example, how to handle redirects. These were adopted in brave, the java tracer.

This is not to downplay input by zipkin regulars, such as @bplotnick @mikewrighton @jcchavezs @takezoe @devinsba @shakuzen @hyleung @basvanbeek, or zipkin newcomers like @spockz who took active roles in discussion or added instrumentation support.

zipkin-gcp (Google Cloud Platform)

Back in late 2016, the Google Stackdriver team released a tool called stackdriver-zipkin to allow existing Zipkin applications to choose their free cloud service as a storage option.

The stackdriver-zipkin project runs as an http proxy and is simple to use. Over time, users started to ask for more flexibility. For example, other transports that exist in Zipkin (like Kafka) or that only exist in GCP like Pub/Sub. Some wanted to embed a stackdriver reporter in their zipkin-enabled apps as opposed routing via to a proxy.

Between late 2016 and now, the OpenZipkin community has a process which allows such developments and exists for Azure and Amazon Web Services. Starting with Zipkin 2.5, stackdriver-zipkin migrates into the zipkin-gcp project which allows the community to maintain it in a fashion to meet these goals.

If you want to try Zipkin against Stackdriver, the easiest start is to share
your credentials with Zipkin's docker image.

$ docker run -d -p 9411:9411 \
  -e STORAGE_TYPE=stackdriver \
  -e GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/root/.gcp/credentials.json \
  -e STACKDRIVER_PROJECT_ID=your_project \
  -v $HOME/.gcp:/root/.gcp:ro \
  openzipkin/zipkin-gcp

Credits

Thanks very much to the contributors of stackdriver-zipkin as they've done a stellar job in the last year plus. Special thanks to @mtwo for proxying the technicalities of migrating a google project into another org. Thanks to @bogdandrutu for a lot of technical support and releases leading up to the migration. Thanks to @anuraaga for a lot of recent work on the codebase and @denyska for not being timid about fixing difficult problems. Finally, thanks to @saturnism for the community work around Google and Zipkin. Ray's advice, patience and help are always appreciated, and his docs are great!

Notable recent updates

There have been notable improvements since the last release notes (Zipkin 2.4.5). Here's a roundup of highlights

  • @michaelsembwever removed separate cassandra keyspace "zipkin2_udts" only used for UDT initialization.
  • @shakuzen added RABBIT_URI to allow RabbitMQ configuration in environments like Cloud Foundry
  • @ScienJus fixed slow api request when loading zipkin UI's home screen
    overlapping calls to health check are no longer permitted.
  • @Logic-32 disabled the search screen when in "firehose mode" (SEARCH_ENABLED=false)
  • @michaelsembwever made cassandra3 search operate even when SASI is disabled for annotationQuery (the biggest index)
  • @xeraa fixes our docs for Kibana integration
  • mysql now uses the correct index based on STRICT_TRACE_ID
  • special shout-out to @mvallebr and @drolando for feedback and testing of our cassandra3 setup
Assets 2
Loading