Distributed Tracing Through Cross-Cloud Event Log Stitching
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Current observability platforms face challenges in achieving distributed traceability in complex multi-language microservices architectures due to programming language dependencies, additional development costs, time-to-market issues, and difficulties in capturing asynchronous flows and custom context information, especially when transactions span multiple cloud data centers and applications.
Innovation Solution
A flow logging utility tracer (FLUTE) system that extracts event log data from various cloud environments, filters and transforms it based on a common identifier, and generates tracing data without requiring any application instrumentation, using open-source tools like Jaeger and OpenTelemetry to create a visual representation of trace flows.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If instrumentation techniques (manual instrumentation, automatic instrumentation, or sidecar proxy) are used to implement distributed tracing, then traceability capability is improved, but development and operation costs increase, and programming language dependencies are introduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary component called a 'tracer' that acts as a mediator between the event log generation system and the distributed tracing system. This tracer receives event logs from various cloud environments, enriches them with tracing context, and publishes them to the tracing system. This intermediary approach eliminates the need for direct instrumentation in application code while maintaining traceability capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables self-service tracing by automatically collecting and enriching event logs from multiple cloud environments without requiring manual instrumentation of each application. The tracer component automatically picks up event logs, adds tracing context, and integrates them into the distributed tracing system, eliminating the need for developers to manually instrument each service.
2Reliability
If instrumentation libraries are implemented at application level or platform level, then distributed traceability is improved, but time to market increases due to additional development and testing processes
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary action by pre-deploying the tracer component and configuring it to automatically collect and enrich event logs before any new services are deployed. This allows the tracing infrastructure to be ready in advance, and new services can be integrated without going through additional instrumentation development and testing cycles.
Solution Approach 2:
The tracer acts as an intermediary layer that is already in place before new services are deployed. Instead of instrumenting each new service individually, the pre-deployed tracer automatically captures event logs from new services as they run, eliminating the need for time-consuming instrumentation development and testing for each new service.
3Measurement precision
If instrumentation is applied to capture custom context information, then traceability precision is improved, but performance overhead increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the tracing functionality from the application code and places it in a separate, dedicated tracer component. This extraction allows the tracer to focus solely on collecting and enriching event logs with tracing context, while the actual application code remains lightweight and performance-critical. The tracer handles all the overhead of context enrichment and data collection externally.
Data Source
AI summary
A flow logging utility tracer (“FLUTE”) system can present a FLUTE user interface through which the FLUTE system can receive a trace request. The FLUTE system can interface, via a FLUTE controller, with a FLUTE adapter corresponding to a cloud environment associated with the trace request. The FLUTE adaptor can extract event log data from a log repository corresponding to the cloud environment. The FLUTE adapter can filter the event log data according to a logging specification. The FLUTE adapter can transform the filtered event log data for compatibility with a FLUTE stitcher. The FLUTE stitcher can generate tracing data based upon the event log data. The FLUTE stitcher can correlate the tracing data based upon a common identifier enforced by the logging specification, prepare the tracing data for publication to a distributed tracing system, and publish the tracing data to the distributed tracing system for storage.