Exporting Distributed Traces

Steeltoe is able to automatically configure several exporters provided by the OpenTelemetry project, including Zipkin, Jaeger and OpenTelemetryProtocol, if a NuGet reference to the desired exporter is included. The Steeltoe.Management.ExporterBase and Steeltoe.Management.ExporterCore packages are no longer required.

Common Settings

As of version 3.1.0, the exporter settings class has been merged with tracing settings. This table includes settings that are only relevant to exporting traces:

Key	Description	Default
ExporterEndpoint	Defines an endpoint traces should be sent to.	not set
MaxPayloadSizeInBytes	Maximum payload size to export, in bytes.	4096
UseShortTraceIds	Whether to truncate the IDs to 8 bytes instead of 16. Used for backwards compatibility.	false

Note: Each setting above must be prefixed with Management:Tracing

Zipkin Server

Zipkin is a popular distributed tracing system that has been around for several years. It is composed of client libraries for instrumenting application code and a backend server for collecting and viewing the collected data. For more information on Zipkin, we encourage you to review the documentation. See the Quickstart guide for details on how to set up a server.

Configure Zipkin Options

In addition to the common exporter settings, you may configure ExportProcessorType and BatchExportProcessorOptions in code:

services.PostConfigure<ZipkinExporterOptions>(options =>
{
    options.ExportProcessorType = ExportProcessorType.Batch;
    options.BatchExportProcessorOptions.ExporterTimeoutMilliseconds = 1000;
});

Use Zipkin Exporter

Steeltoe will discover and automatically configure the Zipkin exporter when a standard NuGet reference is used:

<PackageReference Include="OpenTelemetry.Exporter.Zipkin" Version="1.1.0-rc1" />

Jaeger Server

Jaeger is another popular distributed tracing system that has been around for several years. For more information on Jaeger, we encourage you to visit the Jaeger site. See the Getting Started guide for details on how to quickly set up a server.

Configure Jaeger Options

In addition to the common exporter settings, you may configure ExportProcessorType and BatchExportProcessorOptions in code:

services.PostConfigure<JaegerExporterOptions>(options =>
{
    options.ExportProcessorType = ExportProcessorType.Batch;
    options.BatchExportProcessorOptions.ExporterTimeoutMilliseconds = 1000;
});

Use Jaeger Exporter

Steeltoe will discover and automatically configure the Jaeger exporter when a standard NuGet reference is used:

<PackageReference Include="OpenTelemetry.Exporter.Jaeger" Version="1.1.0-rc1" />

Open Telemetry Protocol

The OTLP (OpenTelemetry Protocol) is a vendor-agnostic way to export traces. Steeltoe will configure this exporter to communicate to an OpenTelemetry Collector through a gRPC protocol.

Configure Open Telemetry Protocol Options

In addition to the common exporter settings, you may configure Headers, ExportProcessorType and BatchExportProcessorOptions in code:

services.PostConfigure<OtlpExporterOptions>(options =>
{
    options.ExportProcessorType = ExportProcessorType.Batch;
    options.BatchExportProcessorOptions.ExporterTimeoutMilliseconds = 1000;
});

Use Open Telemetry Protocol Exporter

Steeltoe will discover and automatically configure the Open Telemetry Protocol exporter when a standard NuGet reference is used:

<PackageReference Include="OpenTelemetry.Exporter.OpenTelemetryProtocol" Version="1.1.0-rc1" />