How-To: Set up Zipkin for distributed tracing

    For self hosted mode, on running :

    1. The following YAML file is created by default in $HOME/.dapr/config.yaml (on Linux/Mac) or %USERPROFILE%\.dapr\config.yaml (on Windows) and it is referenced by default on dapr run calls unless otherwise overridden `:
    • config.yaml
    1. The openzipkin/zipkin docker container is launched on running dapr init or it can be launched with the following code.

    Launch Zipkin using Docker:

      1. The applications launched with dapr run by default reference the config file in $HOME/.dapr/config.yaml or and can be overridden with the Dapr CLI using the --config param:
      1. dapr run --app-id mynode --app-port 3000 node app.js

      To view traces, in your browser go to and you will see the Zipkin UI.

      The following steps shows you how to configure Dapr to send distributed tracing data to Zipkin running as a container in your Kubernetes cluster, and how to view them.

      Create a Kubernetes service for the Zipkin pod:

      1. kubectl expose deployment zipkin --type ClusterIP --port 9411

      Next, create the following YAML file locally:

      • tracing.yaml configuration
      1. apiVersion: dapr.io/v1alpha1
      2. kind: Configuration
      3. metadata:
      4.   name: tracing
      6.   tracing:
      7.     samplingRate: "1"
      8.     zipkin:
      9.       endpointAddress: "http://zipkin.default.svc.cluster.local:9411/api/v2/spans"

      Now, deploy the the Dapr configuration file:

      In order to enable this configuration for your Dapr sidecar, add the following annotation to your pod spec template:

      1. annotations:
      2.   dapr.io/config: "tracing"

      To view traces, connect to the Zipkin service and open the UI:

      In your browser, go to http://localhost:9411 and you will see the Zipkin UI.