Distributed Tracing with Sleuth & Zipkin
Implement distributed tracing using Spring Cloud Sleuth and Zipkin for visibility into microservice interactions.
Distributed Tracing with Sleuth & Zipkin is a free Spring Boot 4 Complete Guide lesson on CoddyKit — lesson 2 of 4. You can read the complete lesson below for free — then practise it hands-on in the browser with a built-in code editor and a 24/7 AI tutor. It is part of the Spring Boot 4 Complete Guide learning path, one of 4 lessons in the course, and your progress syncs across the web and the CoddyKit app.
Tracing Microservices Flow
In microservices architectures, a single user request might travel through many different services. This makes debugging and understanding performance bottlenecks very challenging.
Distributed tracing helps by tracking the full path of a request as it moves across these services, providing end-to-end visibility.
Spring Cloud Sleuth's Role
Spring Cloud Sleuth is a powerful tool that integrates distributed tracing capabilities into your Spring Boot applications. It automatically instruments your services to generate and propagate tracing information.
Sleuth works by adding unique identifiers to every request, allowing you to follow its journey across different service boundaries.
Core Concepts: Trace & Span
Sleuth relies on two fundamental concepts:
- Trace: Represents a single, complete request or workflow across all participating services. Think of it as the entire story of a request.
- Span: A single operation within a trace. Each service call, database query, or method execution can be a span. Spans have parent-child relationships, forming a tree structure for the trace.
Every span has a unique ID, and all spans belonging to the same trace share a common trace ID.
Adding Sleuth Dependency
To enable Sleuth in your Spring Boot application, you simply need to add the spring-cloud-starter-sleuth dependency to your project's pom.xml (for Maven) or build.gradle (for Gradle).
This starter pulls in all necessary components for Sleuth to auto-configure itself.
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-sleuth</artifactId>
</dependency>Basic Sleuth in Action
Once spring-cloud-starter-sleuth is on your classpath, Spring Boot automatically instruments your application. Trace and Span IDs will appear in your logs!
Try running this simple Spring Boot app and observe the console output (though without a full server setup, you won't see actual requests, but the app structure is runnable):
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;
@SpringBootApplication
@RestController
public class MyTracedApplication {
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(MyTracedApplication.class, args);
}
@GetMapping("/hello")
public String hello() {
// Sleuth would automatically add trace/span IDs to logs here
System.out.println("Processing /hello request...");
return "Hello from Traced Service!";
}
}Visualize Traces with Zipkin
While Sleuth adds tracing information to your application's logs, visualizing these traces across multiple services can be complex.
This is where Zipkin comes in! Zipkin is a distributed tracing system that collects and visualizes the trace data generated by Sleuth. It provides a user interface to search and analyze traces.
Launching Zipkin Server
To use Zipkin, you first need to run a Zipkin server. The easiest way is often with Docker:
docker run -p 9411:9411 openzipkin/zipkin
Once running, you can access the Zipkin UI in your browser at http://localhost:9411. This UI will display all the traces sent by your Sleuth-enabled applications.
Connecting Sleuth to Zipkin
To send trace data from your Sleuth-enabled application to the Zipkin server, you need to add the spring-cloud-starter-zipkin dependency and configure the Zipkin server's URL.
Add this dependency:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-zipkin</artifactId>
</dependency>Configuring Zipkin URL
Then, specify the Zipkin server's base URL in your application.properties:
spring.zipkin.base-url=http://localhost:9411
Now, your Spring Boot app will send its trace information to the running Zipkin server for collection and visualization.
Sleuth & Zipkin Check
Let's check your understanding of Spring Cloud Sleuth and Zipkin.
Lesson Summary
In this lesson, you learned about distributed tracing and how Spring Cloud Sleuth and Zipkin provide powerful tools for observability in microservices.
- Sleuth instruments your applications, generating unique trace and span IDs.
- Zipkin collects and visualizes this data, offering a clear view of request flows.
Understanding these tools is crucial for debugging, monitoring, and optimizing complex distributed systems.
Frequently asked questions
Is the “Distributed Tracing with Sleuth & Zipkin” lesson free?
Yes — the full text of “Distributed Tracing with Sleuth & Zipkin” is free to read here on the web, and the Spring Boot 4 Complete Guide course includes 4 lessons in total. To practise it interactively (a built-in code editor and a 24/7 AI tutor) and unlock the rest of the Spring Boot 4 Complete Guide course, upgrade to CoddyKit PRO.
What will I learn in “Distributed Tracing with Sleuth & Zipkin”?
Implement distributed tracing using Spring Cloud Sleuth and Zipkin for visibility into microservice interactions. You practise Spring Boot 4 Complete Guide with hands-on code you run directly in the browser, and a 24/7 AI tutor answers your questions as you work through the lesson.
Do I need any experience to start Spring Boot 4 Complete Guide?
No prior experience is required. Spring Boot 4 Complete Guide on CoddyKit is structured for beginners through advanced learners; this is — lesson 2 of 4, so you can start here or from the beginning and move at your own pace.
How long does the “Distributed Tracing with Sleuth & Zipkin” lesson take?
Most CoddyKit lessons take about 5–10 minutes. Each one is bite-sized and interactive, so you make steady progress and pick up exactly where you left off across the web and the app.
Can I write and run code in this Spring Boot 4 Complete Guide lesson?
Yes. Every Spring Boot 4 Complete Guide lesson includes a built-in code editor, so you write and run real code right in your browser and get instant AI feedback — no local setup required.
All lessons in this course
- Kubernetes Orchestration Basics
- Distributed Tracing with Sleuth & Zipkin
- Health Checks & Resilience Patterns
- Metrics and Dashboards with Micrometer and Prometheus