Zipkin

Zipkin is a distributed tracing system. It helps gather timing data needed to troubleshoot latency problems in service architectures. Features include both the collection and lookup of this data.

Installation

Option 1: Quick start

Istio provides a basic sample installation to quickly get Zipkin up and running:

$ kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/istio/istio/master/samples/addons/extras/zipkin.yaml

This will deploy Zipkin into your cluster. This is intended for demonstration only, and is not tuned for performance or security.

Option 2: Customizable install

Consult the Zipkin documentation to get started. No special changes are needed for Zipkin to work with Istio.

Once Zipkin is installed, you will need to point Istio proxies to send traces to the deployment. This can be configured with --set meshConfig.defaultConfig.tracing.zipkin.address=<zipkin-collector-address>:9411 at installation time. See the ProxyConfig.Tracing for advanced configuration such as TLS settings.

Usage

For more information on using Zipkin, please refer to the Zipkin task.