# Distributed Tracing **Distributed Tracing** enables tracking of requests as they pass through the microservices in a system**.** Ddosify captures **Traces** and **Spans** out-of-the-box on your Kubernetes Cluster without modifying your code or restarting your services. Ddosify uses a lightweight [eBPF Agent (Alaz)](https://github.com/ddosify/alaz) to generate Distributed Tracing data and enable auto context propagation. To do so, on the [Ddosify Platform](https://app.ddosify.com/), click "Clusters" under the "Observability" tab first.

After you click on a cluster you want to observe on the clusters page, click on the distributed tracing tab. This will take you to the distributed tracing page. You will see this:

Here, you can filter and view traces in chart and list form. ### Filtering You can apply the following filtering: * Operations (trace names) * Trace count * Tags * Min/max duration (in ms) * Min/max span count * Time interval {% hint style="info" %} **Note:** Filtering affects both the trace chart and the trace list. They show the same traces but in different formats. {% endhint %} To apply filtering, click the "Filters" button on the upper right.

#### Operations Operations filtering allows you to select traces with specific names. It allows multi-select so that you can look for multiple names. {% hint style="info" %} **Note:** The name of a trace is the name of its first span. {% endhint %} #### Max Results This limits the number of traces shown. #### Tags Tags allow you to filter traces by the tags in their spans. Tag filtering accepts the [logfmt](https://brandur.org/logfmt) format. {% hint style="info" %} **Note:** Span attributes are not allowed to be nested; thus, tag filtering does not support nested filtering either. {% endhint %} Let's see how we can query traces by their tags. Let this be an example tags for a span: ```json { "path": "/", "to_ip": "192.168.20.73", "method": "GET", "to_uid": "d0210c8f-fe44-472c-bbb2-39d64973e5a4", "from_ip": "192.168.30.206", "to_name": "kube-state-metrics-shard", "to_port": "8081", "to_type": "daemonset", "from_uid": "2148b55d-cab8-41c6-ab5e-b12d9630ba0c", "protocol": "HTTP", "from_name": "aws-node", "from_port": "41736", "from_type": "daemonset", "status_code": "200" } ``` An example tag filter could look like this: ``` method=GET protocol=HTTP from_port=41736 ``` While filtering, it is enough for a single span of a trace to satisfy this filter. As a result, the traces with at least one span matching this filter are retrieved. #### Min/Max Duration You can filter the traces by the total time they took in ms. #### Min/Max Span Count You can also filter the traces by their span count. #### Time Interval To apply a time interval, click the "Last 5 min" button next to the "Filters" button. You will see this:

Here, you can specify your desired time interval. You can specify your start-end times yourself or pick predefined time intervals from the "Quick Selections" section. {% hint style="info" %} **Note:** The time interval between the start and the end could be apart at most 24 hours. {% endhint %} ### Trace Chart The trace chart allows you to view the distribution of your filtered traces by their dates and durations. While the x-axis is the date, the y-axis is the duration.

To view more details (start time, name, duration, span count) about a trace, you can hover on it:

### Trace List Under the trace chart, you can view the filtered traces in a listed format. You can delete them here as well. You can also use the page numbers below to see the remaining traces.

### Trace Details After you click on a trace (either on the chart or the list), you can view its details (including its call hierarchy and time).

Each row represents a trace, whereas the columns represent the time. No matter how long your trace took, the whole hierarchy is always fitted inside your view, so you would not need scrolling/zooming to understand the trace. You can expand/collapse spans by clicking on their "Name" column.

You can also hover over a span to see its details, such as: * Source/target ports * Path (endpoint) * Status code * Request method * Start/end time

For more details, you can click on a span:

Here, you can view the span's details, including: * From/to resources * From/to IPs * From/to port numbers * Start/end times * Duration * Path * Method * Protocol * Status code {% hint style="success" %} If you require assistance with **Distributed Tracing**, you can join our[ Discord](https://discord.com/invite/9KdnrSUZQg) or send an email to . {% endhint %}