In modern microservices architectures, tracking requests as they flow across service boundaries is critical for debugging performance bottlenecks, diagnosing failures, and maintaining system reliability. While Zipkin and Jaeger have been popular distributed tracing tools, OpenTelemetry has emerged as the new standard, offering vendor-neutral instrumentation, logs, metrics, and traces in a unified framework.

This article explores:

• Why OpenTelemetry (OTel) is replacing traditional tracing tools
• How to integrate OpenTelemetry with Spring Boot
• Best practices for distributed tracing in microservices
• Visualizing traces with Jaeger, Zipkin, and Grafana

1. Why OpenTelemetry? The Evolution Beyond Zipkin

The Limitations of Traditional Tracing (Zipkin/Jaeger)

• Vendor lock-in: Zipkin/Jaeger require specific SDKs.
• Limited correlation: Metrics, logs, and traces were separate.
• Manual instrumentation: Required explicit code changes.

How OpenTelemetry Solves These Problems

• Standardized APIs: Works across multiple backends (Jaeger, Zipkin, Prometheus, etc.).
• Auto-instrumentation: Captures traces without code changes.
• Unified Observability: Combines traces, metrics, and logs.

2. Setting Up OpenTelemetry in Spring Boot

Step 1: Add Dependencies

<!-- OpenTelemetry SDK & Auto-Instrumentation -->
<dependency>
 <groupId>io.opentelemetry</groupId>
 <artifactId>opentelemetry-api</artifactId>
 <version>1.30.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
 <groupId>io.opentelemetry</groupId>
 <artifactId>opentelemetry-sdk</artifactId>
 <version>1.30.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
 <groupId>io.opentelemetry.instrumentation</groupId>
 <artifactId>opentelemetry-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
 <version>2.1.0</version>
</dependency>

Step 2: Configure application.yml

opentelemetry:
 service:
 name: order-service
 traces:
 exporter:
 otlp:
 endpoint: http://otel-collector:4317 # OTLP Collector
 logs:
 exporter:
 otlp:
 enabled: true
 metrics:
 exporter:
 otlp:
 enabled: true

Step 3: Deploy an OpenTelemetry Collector

# docker-compose.yml
services:
 otel-collector:
 image: otel/opentelemetry-collector
 ports:
 - "4317:4317" # OTLP gRPC
 - "4318:4318" # OTLP HTTP
 volumes:
 - ./otel-config.yaml:/etc/otel-config.yaml
 command: ["--config=/etc/otel-config.yaml"]

Step 4: Export Traces to Jaeger/Zipkin

# otel-config.yaml
exporters:
 jaeger:
 endpoint: "jaeger:14250"
 tls:
 insecure: true
 zipkin:
 endpoint: "http://zipkin:9411/api/v2/spans"

service:
 pipelines:
 traces:
 receivers: [otlp]
 processors: [batch]
 exporters: [jaeger, zipkin]

3. Advanced Distributed Tracing Techniques

Custom Spans for Business Logic

@GetMapping("/process")
public String processOrder() {
 Span span = Span.current();
 span.setAttribute("order.id", "12345"); // Custom attributes
 
 try (Scope scope = span.makeCurrent()) {
 // Business logic
 inventoryService.reserveItems();
 paymentService.chargeCustomer();
 return "Order processed!";
 } catch (Exception e) {
 span.recordException(e); // Error tracking
 throw e;
 }
}

Baggage Propagation (Cross-Service Context)

// Set baggage in Service A
Baggage.current()
 .toBuilder()
 .put("user.id", "user-123")
 .build()
 .makeCurrent();

// Retrieve in Service B
String userId = Baggage.current().getEntryValue("user.id");

Sampling Strategies

# application.yml
opentelemetry:
 traces:
 sampler: parentbased_always_on # or "dynamic" for adaptive sampling

4. Visualizing Traces: Jaeger vs. Zipkin vs. Grafana

5. Best Practices for Production

1. Use OTLP (OpenTelemetry Protocol) instead of vendor-specific exporters.
2. Enable Auto-Instrumentation for Spring Web, JDBC, Kafka, etc.
3. Implement Sampling to reduce storage costs.
4. Correlate Logs & Traces using trace_id.
5. Monitor Collector Performance to avoid bottlenecks.

Conclusion

OpenTelemetry provides a future-proof, vendor-neutral way to implement distributed tracing in Spring Boot microservices. By replacing Zipkin/Jaeger with OTel, teams gain:

• Auto-instrumentation (no manual code changes)
• Unified observability (traces + metrics + logs)
• Better debugging with correlated telemetry

Further Reading

• OpenTelemetry Docs
• Spring Boot + OTel Guide
• Jaeger vs. Zipkin Comparison