AWS X-Ray Tracing support

Akka Insights 2.16.1+ can report traces to AWS X-Ray new tab using the AWS Distro new tab and the Zipkin reporter new tab .

Note that Akka Insights doesn’t send traces directly to AWS X-Ray. You will need to set up the AWS OTel Collector new tab within your EKS cluster. Akka Insights uses Zipkin protocol to send traces to the AWS OTel Collector which batches them and then pushes them to the AWS X-Ray backend.

First, you will need to install the AWS OTel Collector into your EKS cluster.

Follow the Getting Started with the AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry Collector instruction.

Once you have the AWS OTel Collector deployed you will need to configure your application.

To enable your application for trace production, you will need to set up the Cinnamon agent as described on the Akka Insights Getting started new tab page.

After that, you will need to add tracing-specific configuration and dependencies.

The following are the core Cinnamon and Zipkin reporter dependencies that you will need to add to your build tool configuration:

Java

pom.xml

<!-- Cinnamon OpenTracing core dependency -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.lightbend.cinnamon</groupId>
    <artifactId>cinnamon-opentracing_${scala.binary.version}</artifactId>
</dependency>
<!-- Cinnamon OpenTracing Zipkin reporter dependency -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.lightbend.cinnamon</groupId>
    <artifactId>cinnamon-opentracing-zipkin</artifactId>
</dependency>

Scala

build.sbt

libraryDependencies ++= Seq(
  Cinnamon.library.cinnamonOpenTracing,
  Cinnamon.library.cinnamonOpenTracingZipkin)

After you have made that alteration, enable Akka Insights X-Ray support new tab (only available in Akka Insights 2.16.1+) and configure Zipkin reporter to send traces to the AWS OTel Collector:

src/main/resources/telemetry.conf

cinnamon.opentracing {
  // Akka Insights 2.16.1+ only
  tracer.aws-xray-trace-id-format = on
  zipkin {
    url-connection {
      endpoint = "http://<awsOTelCollectorServiceEndpoint>:9411/api/v2/spans"
    }
  }
}

Akka Insights provides a wide variety of tracing options you can find in the Akka Insights documentation new tab .

As an example you can use the next configuration to enable HTTP client and server tracing:

src/main/resources/telemetry.conf

cinnamon.akka.http {
  servers {
    "*:*" {
      paths {
        "*" {
          traceable = on
        }
      }
    }
  }
  clients {
    "*:*" {
      paths {
        "*" {
          traceable = on
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Once the application is configured and deployed the traces will appear at the AWS X-Ray console.