How to use tracing
This guide explains how to activate traces and export them to the OTEL collector
Aidbox supports exporting traces using the Protobuf protocol in line with the OTEL specification. This guide configures Aidbox to export traces to the OpenTelemetry collector, but the setup can also be modified to export to other traces consumers that adhere to this specification.
This way of enabling OTEL capabilities is available in Aidbox versions 2503 and later. On previous AIdbox versions it was possible to enable OTEL with Aidbox configuration project.
Prerequisites
- 1.OTEL collector should be deployed and configured to receive traces.
How to enable traces export to the OTEL collector
To enable exporting traces to the OTEL collector set the OTEL collector traces receiver endpoint to the Aidbox
setting observability.otel.traces-url
How to pass the trace-id
You can use the traceparent
header to pass the trace-id. You will see the trace-id in the traces and you can use it to correlate traces from multiple sources.
How to check the OTEL collector receives traces
Set up debug exporter and traces pipeline in the OTEL collector configuration:
receivers:
receivers:
otlp:
protocols:
http:
endpoint: <your-collector-resiever-endpoint>
exporters:
debug:
verbosity: detailed
service:
pipelines:
traces:
receivers: [otlp]
exporters: [debug] # OTEL prints traces to the stdout
See Aidbox traces in the OTEL collector stdout
Open OTEL collector stdout and see the traces.
Check traces sending status
The common endpoint for checking the status of sending metrics process
GET /telemetry/main/otel-trace-exporter/$status
queue-size: 10
history:
- ts: 1700661071
processed-count: 34
Force flush OTEL traces
To force flush all the traces Aidbox has in the queue use $flush endpoint:
POST /telemetry/main/otel-trace-exporter/$flush
Check all available Aidbox OTEL traces exporter configuration options are here:
Last updated 2025-08-07T12:18:32Z