Distributed Tracing with Micrometer Tracing and OpenTelemetry

Add Micrometer Tracing with the OpenTelemetry bridge and an OTLP exporter to create spans for incoming requests, RestClient calls, JDBC (with datasource-micrometer) and messaging, propagated via W3C traceparent headers. Trace and span IDs are added to the logging MDC, so logs correlate with traces. Use sampling in production.

@Service
class FulfillmentService {
    private final ObservationRegistry observations;
    FulfillmentService(ObservationRegistry observations) { this.observations = observations; }

    void ship(Order order) {
        Observation.createNotStarted("shop.fulfillment.ship", observations)
                .lowCardinalityKeyValue("carrier", order.carrier())
                .observe(() -> carrierClient.createShipment(order));   // timer + span
    }
}

management:
  tracing:
    sampling:
      probability: 0.1
  otlp:
    tracing:
      endpoint: http://otel-collector:4318/v1/traces

Common pitfalls

• Creating HTTP clients with new instead of the auto-configured builder (no instrumentation).
• 100% sampling in high-traffic production.
• High-cardinality values as low-cardinality keys.

Key points

• Micrometer Tracing + OTel bridge
• Use auto-configured builders for instrumentation
• Trace IDs in logs

Further reading: Spring Boot: Tracing