How do you implement distributed tracing across NestJS microservices?

Q: How do you implement distributed tracing across NestJS microservices?

// npm i @opentelemetry/sdk-node @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node // npm i @opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-grpc // tracing.ts — initialize BEFORE app bootstrap (import first in main.ts) import { NodeSDK } from '@opentelemetry/sdk-node'; import { OTLPTraceExporter } from '@opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-grpc'; import { getNodeAutoInstrumentations } from '@opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node'; const sdk = new NodeSDK({ traceExporter: new OTLPTraceExporter({ url: 'http://jaeger:4317' }), instrumentations: [getNodeAutoInstrumentations()], serviceName: 'orders-service', }); sdk.start(); // Publisher — inject trace context into outgoing message headers async publishOrder(order: Order): Promise { const carrier: Record = {}; propagation.inject(context.active(), carrier); // adds traceparent header this.client.emit('order-events', { value: order, headers: carrier, // includes traceparent, tracestate }).subscribe(); } // Consumer — extract trace context from incoming headers @EventPattern('order-events') async handleOrder( @Payload() data: OrderEvent, @Ctx() ctx: KafkaContext, ): Promise { const headers = ctx.getMessage().headers ?? {}; const parentCtx = propagation.extract(context.active(), headers); context.with(parentCtx, async () => { await this.processOrder(data); // all spans created here are children of the parent }); } Initialize the OpenTelemetry SDK before NestFactory.create() — import tracing.ts as the first line of main.ts. Inject propagation headers (traceparent, tracestate) into every outgoing Kafka/RabbitMQ message. Extract propagation headers from every incoming message and restore the parent context. auto-instrumentations-node instruments HTTP, database, and Redis calls automatically — no manual spans needed for common operations. Use a sampling strategy in production — tracing 100% of requests at high traffic is expensive.

Difficulty: 7/10

OpenTelemetry, Context propagation, Sampling

Use OpenTelemetry SDK with auto-instrumentations initialized before app bootstrap. Inject trace context into Kafka message headers when publishing. Extract the parent trace context from headers when consuming so all spans across services appear in the same trace in Jaeger or Zipkin.

OpenTelemetry setup and context propagation via Kafka headers

Distributed tracing implementation checklist:

How do you implement distributed tracing across NestJS microservices?

Difficulty: 7/10

OpenTelemetry, Context propagation, Sampling

Use OpenTelemetry SDK with auto-instrumentations initialized before app bootstrap. Inject trace context into Kafka message headers when publishing. Extract the parent trace context from headers when consuming so all spans across services appear in the same trace in Jaeger or Zipkin.

OpenTelemetry setup and context propagation via Kafka headers

Distributed tracing implementation checklist:

How do you implement distributed tracing across NestJS microservices?

Use OpenTelemetry SDK with auto-instrumentations initialized before app bootstrap. Inject trace context into Kafka message headers when publishing. Extract the parent trace context from headers when consuming so all spans across services appear in the same trace in Jaeger or Zipkin.

How do you implement distributed tracing across NestJS microservices?

Use OpenTelemetry SDK with auto-instrumentations initialized before app bootstrap. Inject trace context into Kafka message headers when publishing. Extract the parent trace context from headers when consuming so all spans across services appear in the same trace in Jaeger or Zipkin.

Scenario Questions

Follow-up Questions