Jaeger Distributed Tracing in Practice by Richard Johnson

"Jaeger Distributed Tracing in Practice"

"Jaeger Distributed Tracing in Practice" is a definitive guide to mastering observability in today’s complex, distributed systems. Beginning with a thorough exploration of foundational concepts—such as the evolution of system observability, core distributed tracing principles, and the prominent role of emerging standards like OpenTracing and OpenTelemetry—this book helps readers understand the “why” and “how” of distributed tracing. Through insightful comparisons with alternative tools and real-world use cases, it contextualizes Jaeger within the broader observability ecosystem, highlighting its value in addressing the unique challenges of monitoring modern architectures.

The book proceeds to expertly dissect Jaeger’s architecture and its operational lifecycle, providing a granular look at individual system components, data flows, storage backends, and deployment models suitable for both monolithic and cloud-native environments. With dedicated chapters on instrumentation strategies, scaling, security, and customization, it offers best practices for introducing tracing into existing codebases, managing context propagation, applying advanced sampling strategies, and optimizing for both performance and cost. Real-world advice for production environments ensures that readers are equipped to plan capacity, secure deployments, monitor health, and maintain high availability.

In the latter sections, the guide unlocks advanced analytics and troubleshooting techniques, including the integration of trace data with logs and metrics for full-stack observability, and the use of automated diagnostics for rapid incident response. In-depth case studies illuminate proven deployment patterns and organizational roll-out strategies, while forward-looking chapters address emerging trends—such as tracing for IoT and edge, privacy and regulatory compliance, and Jaeger’s evolving role in the open-source observability landscape. Comprehensive yet accessible, this book is essential for engineers, architects, and leaders intent on building resilient, transparent, and high-performance distributed systems.