Distributed Tracing with Sleuth/Zipkin
Implement distributed tracing using Spring Cloud Sleuth and Zipkin to track event flows across multiple microservices.
Distributed Tracing with Sleuth/Zipkin is a free Advanced Spring Boot 4: Event-Driven Architecture (Kafka) lesson on CoddyKit — lesson 3 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 Advanced Spring Boot 4: Event-Driven Architecture (Kafka) learning path, one of 4 lessons in the course, and your progress syncs across the web and the CoddyKit app.
Why Trace Distributed Systems?
In a microservices architecture, a single user request often travels through many different services. This distributed nature makes it incredibly hard to track the flow of requests and pinpoint where issues occur.
Distributed tracing helps you visualize the full journey of a request across all services involved, making debugging and performance monitoring much easier.
Trace and Span: Your Navigation Tools
Distributed tracing relies on two core concepts:
- Trace: Represents the complete journey of a request through a system, from start to finish. It's like a story of one operation.
- Span: A single, logical unit of work within a trace. Each operation (e.g., an HTTP request, a database call, sending a Kafka message) gets its own span. Spans have parent-child relationships, showing cause and effect.
Meet Spring Cloud Sleuth
Spring Cloud Sleuth is a powerful library for Spring Boot applications that automatically adds distributed tracing capabilities. It instruments your application to generate, collect, and propagate trace information.
- It automatically adds trace and span IDs to your logs.
- It propagates these IDs across service boundaries (HTTP, messaging, etc.).
This means you don't have to manually manage trace IDs in most cases!
Getting Started: Add Sleuth & Zipkin
To integrate Spring Cloud Sleuth into your Spring Boot project, add the following dependencies to your pom.xml:
spring-cloud-starter-sleuth: The core tracing library.spring-cloud-sleuth-zipkin: Integrates with Zipkin for trace visualization.
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-sleuth</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-cloud-sleuth-zipkin</artifactId>
</dependency>Minimal Sleuth Configuration
After adding the dependencies, a minimal configuration in your application.properties is usually enough to get started. Sleuth will automatically detect and configure itself.
To send traces to a Zipkin server, specify its URL:
spring.application.name=my-kafka-producer-app
spring.zipkin.base-url=http://localhost:9411
spring.sleuth.sampler.probability=1.0Tracing Across Kafka Messages
One of Sleuth's key features is its ability to propagate trace context across messaging systems like Kafka. When you use Spring's KafkaTemplate to send messages:
- Sleuth automatically injects trace and span IDs into the Kafka message headers.
- When a
@KafkaListenerreceives the message, Sleuth extracts these headers and continues the trace, linking the producer's span to the consumer's span.
This creates a continuous trace, even across asynchronous Kafka message flows.
Zipkin: See Your Traces
While Sleuth generates and propagates trace data, Zipkin is the distributed tracing system that collects, stores, and visualizes this data. It provides a user interface where you can:
- Search for traces by service name, timestamp, or trace ID.
- View a Gantt chart representation of a trace, showing the sequence and duration of spans.
- Identify performance bottlenecks and errors across your microservices.
Spin Up Zipkin Locally
For local development and testing, you can easily run a Zipkin server using Docker. This provides a quick way to see your traces without complex setup.
docker run -d -p 9411:9411 openzipkin/zipkinProducer with Sleuth Instrumentation
Here's a simple Spring Boot Kafka producer. With Sleuth and Zipkin configured (as shown in earlier scenes), when you run this, Sleuth will automatically add tracing headers to the Kafka message. You would see the traceId and spanId in your application logs and in the Zipkin UI.
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.kafka.core.KafkaTemplate;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestParam;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;
@SpringBootApplication
@RestController
public class SleuthKafkaProducerApplication {
@Autowired
private KafkaTemplate<String, String> kafkaTemplate;
private static final String TOPIC = "my-traceable-topic";
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(SleuthKafkaProducerApplication.class, args);
}
@GetMapping("/send")
public String sendMessage(@RequestParam("message") String message) {
kafkaTemplate.send(TOPIC, message);
return "Message sent with trace context: " + message;
}
}Quick Check: Tracing Concepts
When a Spring Boot application with Spring Cloud Sleuth sends a message to Kafka, which of the following statements are true about trace information?
Lesson Summary: Tracing Your Flow
You've learned about distributed tracing, a critical technique for understanding complex microservice interactions. We covered:
- The concepts of Trace (full request journey) and Span (individual operation).
- How Spring Cloud Sleuth automatically instruments Spring Boot applications, including Kafka producers and consumers, to propagate tracing context.
- The role of Zipkin in collecting and visualizing these traces, providing invaluable insights into your system's behavior.
With these tools, you can effectively monitor and debug your event-driven microservices!
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 Advanced Spring Boot 4: Event-Driven Architecture (Kafka) 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 Advanced Spring Boot 4: Event-Driven Architecture (Kafka) course, upgrade to CoddyKit PRO.
What will I learn in “Distributed Tracing with Sleuth/Zipkin”?
Implement distributed tracing using Spring Cloud Sleuth and Zipkin to track event flows across multiple microservices. You practise Advanced Spring Boot 4: Event-Driven Architecture (Kafka) 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 Advanced Spring Boot 4: Event-Driven Architecture (Kafka)?
No prior experience is required. Advanced Spring Boot 4: Event-Driven Architecture (Kafka) on CoddyKit is structured for beginners through advanced learners; this is — lesson 3 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 Advanced Spring Boot 4: Event-Driven Architecture (Kafka) lesson?
Yes. Every Advanced Spring Boot 4: Event-Driven Architecture (Kafka) 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
- Kafka Metrics (JMX) and Health Checks
- Integrating with Prometheus & Grafana
- Distributed Tracing with Sleuth/Zipkin
- Monitoring Consumer Lag and Setting Alerts