View and investigate traces
Trace data is visualized through filtered trace lists and icicle charts allowing you to find and troubleshoot faulty transactions easily.
Traces page
Use Traces to search and view traces.
To open go to + New > Traces.
A new Traces page opens:
You can view traces in a Table.
Table
Click on any row to open the Trace View. Traces are displayed in the following columns:
| Column name | Example value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| #A | Indicates the query returning the trace. | |
| Trace ID | ffaf2f69ee8ad0c1 | The unique identifier of the trace. |
| Root Service | api | The service that started the trace. |
| Started At | 07/27/2020 09:01:04.533 | When the trace started. |
| Duration | 12.582 ms | The amount of time the trace spans. |
| Number of spans | 35 | A trace consists of spans. This number tells you how many spans are in the trace. |
| Duration Breakdown |  |
Each color indicates a service. The colors assigned to services are always the same on your account. You can change the color in the span summary tab after clicking on the individual span in trace view. Hover over to view a percentage breakdown of how long each span covers in the trace.  |
| Number of errors | 0 | The number of errors in the trace. |
| Status | 200 | The HTTP status code of the trace. A menu is available in this column when hovering on a row.  The menu has an option to Show similar traces. |
Trace query
A trace query allows you to search for traces representing transaction flows through your system using the following filters:
- Root Service: name of the service that started the trace
- Any Service: name of a service that took part in the trace
- Duration: time in milliseconds of the trace
- Number of spans
- Number of errors
To write a query click on the Choose filters input line. You can select the desired filter type and value from the drop down menu or manually type them. Multiple filters are allowed in a query row, AND is implicit.
You can add more queries by clicking the + icon on the right of the query row:
Each query is labeled with a letter, in the following screenshot the first query on the top row is labeled #A, the second query is labeled #B.
Custom Filters
Administrators can add up to five custom fields for filtering traces.
- The fields must be low-cardinality among any trace spans and a string data type.
- Added fields are available after one business day.
To add custom fields:
- Click the three vertical dots on the top right of the Traces page.
- Select the Add custom field for filtering option to open the form.
- Define the fields you want to add as filters. Click the Add new field link to add another field.
Visibility
Use the eye icon to toggle the visibility of results from a query. When hidden, the traces returned from the query in the row are not displayed in your results.
Time range
Results are returned for the time window selected. See Time Range Expressions for details on defining a time range.
Refresh
The results are not automatically updated. If you want to refresh traces, click the refresh button on the top right corner of the page.
Trace View
Trace View shows the time flow of a single trace by its spans. To open, click on a trace row in the Traces table. Each color represents a different service.
Navigate
- Use your mouse to drag and zoom in and out. To reset your view, click the Reset View button on the bottom left of the window.
- You can click the Critical path contribution by service bar at the top to filter out the services that are of less interest. The critical path is the sequence of span segments that contribute to the total trace duration.
- Use the Error Spans Only toggle to hide or show error spans and the Hide all services button to hide services.
- Hover over a span to view the parent span relationship.
Details pane
Click on any span to open a side panel with details.
The details pane provides the following tabs:
- Summary
- The details of the span are provided.
- To drill down further into your data, the Logs section has links to run searches against related log data. Top links for span/trace IDs work if you have span and trace IDs injected into logs. Lower section links are available and work automatically if SumoLogic Kubernetes Collection is installed.
-
Service Color
- The color of the Service can be changed by clicking the colored box and selecting a defined swatch or custom color.
- Metadata
- Lists all of the related service entities involved in the span.
- You can click on the clipboard icon to copy the value to your computer's clipboard.
- Lists all of the related service entities involved in the span.
- Entities
The Entities tab provides troubleshooting links for related Entities and Environments, as well as any Monitors with a Critical, Warning, or Missing Data status that are tracking logs or metrics on the Entity.
Only entity types from a curated list are identified. The AWS, Kubernetes, Traces, and Host domains are supported.
Troubleshoot links
To investigate, click the Open In button and select an icon to launch another feature against the entity or environment. An icon is not available if it isn't a valid launch.
Time selector
Use the time selector to set if data is related to the "now" moment of time or the moment of time around the data point you clicked on.
Triggered monitors
Monitors track your Metrics or Logs data in real time and send notifications when noteworthy changes happen in your production applications. The Entities tab shows any Monitors with a Critical, Warning, or Missing Data status that are tracking logs or metrics on the Entity.
Next to the Entity, you'll see any of the following icons indicating the type of Monitor alert that has triggered.
Click the Triggered monitors row to view the related Monitors. You can click on them to view the Monitor on the Monitors page.
