Jaeger

Jaeger configuration

Jaeger is a highly recommended service because Kiali uses distributed tracing data for several features, providing an enhanced experience.

By default, Kiali will try to reach Jaeger at the GRPC-enabled URL of the form http://tracing.<istio_namespace_name>:16685/jaeger, which is the usual case if you are using the Jaeger Istio add-on. If this endpoint is unreachable, Kiali will disable features that use distributed tracing data.

If your Jaeger instance has a different service name or is installed to a different namespace, you must manually provide the endpoint where it is available, like in the following example:

spec:
  external_services:
    tracing:
      # Enabled by default. Kiali will anyway fallback to disabled if
      # Jaeger is unreachable.
      enabled: true
      # Jaeger service name is "tracing" and is in the "telemetry" namespace.
      # Make sure the URL you provide corresponds to the non-GRPC enabled endpoint
      # if you set "use_grpc" to false.
      in_cluster_url: 'http://tracing.telemetry:16685/jaeger'
      use_grpc: true
      # Public facing URL of Jaeger
      url: 'http://my-jaeger-host/jaeger'

Minimally, you must provide spec.external_services.tracing.in_cluster_url to enable Kiali features that use distributed tracing data. However, Kiali can provide contextual links that users can use to jump to the Jaeger console to inspect tracing data more in depth. For these links to be available you need to set the spec.external_services.tracing.url which may mean that you should expose Jaeger outside the cluster.