// This assembly is included in the following assemblies:
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// configuring/configuring.adoc

[id='assembly-distributed-tracing-{context}']
= Distributed tracing

Distributed tracing allows you to track the progress of transactions between applications in a distributed system. In a microservices architecture, tracing tracks the progress of transactions between services. Trace data is useful for monitoring application performance and investigating issues with target systems and end-user applications.

In Strimzi, tracing facilitates the end-to-end tracking of messages: from source systems to Kafka, and then from Kafka to target systems and applications. It complements the metrics that are available to view in link:{BookURLDeploying}#assembly-metrics-setup-{context}[Grafana dashboards], as well as the component loggers.

[discrete]
== How Strimzi supports tracing

Support for tracing is built in to the following components:

* Kafka Connect
* MirrorMaker
* MirrorMaker 2.0
* Strimzi Kafka Bridge

You enable and configure tracing for these components using template configuration properties in their custom resources.

To enable tracing in Kafka producers, consumers, and Kafka Streams API applications, you _instrument_ application code using the link:https://github.com/opentracing-contrib/java-kafka-client/blob/master/README.md[OpenTracing Apache Kafka Client Instrumentation^] library (included with Strimzi). When instrumented, clients generate trace data; for example, when producing messages or writing offsets to the log.

Traces are sampled according to a sampling strategy and then visualized in the Jaeger user interface.

[NOTE]
====
Tracing is not supported for Kafka brokers.

Setting up tracing for applications and systems beyond Strimzi is outside the scope of this chapter. To learn more about this subject, search for "inject and extract" in the {OpenTracingDocs}.
====

[discrete]
== Outline of procedures

To set up tracing for Strimzi, follow these procedures in order:

* Set up tracing for clients:

** xref:proc-configuring-jaeger-tracer-kafka-clients-{context}[Initialize a Jaeger tracer for Kafka clients]

* Instrument clients with tracers:

** xref:proc-instrumenting-producers-consumers-for-opentracing-{context}[Instrument producers and consumers for tracing]

** xref:proc-instrumenting-kafka-streams-with-tracers-{context}[Instrument Kafka Streams applications for tracing]

* xref:assembly-setting-up-tracing-mirror-maker-connect-bridge-{context}[Set up tracing for MirrorMaker, Kafka Connect, and the Kafka Bridge]

.Prerequisites

* The Jaeger backend components are deployed to your Kubernetes cluster. For deployment instructions, see the {JaegerDocs}.

include::../../modules/tracing/con-overview-opentracing-jaeger.adoc[leveloffset=+1]

include::assembly-setting-up-tracing-kafka-clients.adoc[leveloffset=+1]

include::assembly-instrumenting-kafka-clients-tracers.adoc[leveloffset=+1]

include::assembly-setting-up-tracing-mirror-maker-connect-bridge.adoc[leveloffset=+1]
