1. Documentation
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Distributed tracing UI plugin

Starting with OKD 4.19, the perspectives in the web console have unified. The Developer perspective is no longer enabled by default.

All users can interact with all OKD web console features. However, if you are not the cluster owner, you might need to request permission to access certain features from the cluster owner.

You can still enable the Developer perspective. On the Getting Started pane in the web console, you can take a tour of the console, find information on setting up your cluster, view a quick start for enabling the Developer perspective, and follow links to explore new features and capabilities.

The distributed tracing UI plugin adds tracing-related features to the OKD web console at Observe → Traces. You can follow requests through the front end and into the backend of microservices, helping you identify code errors and performance bottlenecks in distributed systems.

Installing the Cluster Observability Operator distributed tracing UI plugin

Prerequisites

  • You have access to the cluster as a user with the cluster-admin cluster role.

  • You have logged in to the OKD web console.

  • You have installed the Cluster Observability Operator

Procedure

  1. In the OKD web console, click Operators → Installed Operators and select Cluster Observability Operator

  2. Choose the UI Plugin tab (at the far right of the tab list) and press Create UIPlugin

  3. Select YAML view, enter the following content, and then press Create:

    apiVersion: observability.openshift.io/v1alpha1
kind: UIPlugin
metadata:
  name: distributed-tracing
spec:
  type: DistributedTracing

Using the Cluster Observability Operator distributed tracing UI plugin

Prerequisites

  • You have access to the cluster as a user with the cluster-admin cluster role.

  • You have logged in to the OKD web console.

  • You have installed the Cluster Observability Operator.

  • You have installed the Cluster Observability Operator distributed tracing UI plugin.

  • You have a TempoStack or TempoMonolithic multi-tenant instance in the cluster.

Procedure

  1. In the OKD web console, click Observe → Traces.

  2. Select a TempoStack or TempoMonolithic multi-tenant instance and set a time range and query for the traces to be loaded.

    The traces are displayed on a scatter-plot showing the trace start time, duration, and number of spans. Underneath the scatter plot, there is a list of traces showing information such as the Trace Name, number of Spans, and Duration.

  3. Click on a trace name link.

    The trace detail page for the selected trace contains a Gantt Chart of all of the spans within the trace. Select a span to show a breakdown of the configured attributes.