What is Zipkin?

Zipkin is an open source distributed tracing system used for gathering timing data needed to troubleshoot latency problems in microservice architectures. It helps pinpoint where failures or latency issues occur in complex systems with many inter-service calls.

Zipkin provides both data collection and visualization. It instruments application code to gather timing data per inter-service call such as the duration and response codes. Data is reported to Zipkin servers where it can then be queried or visualized through its UI. The visualization shows how long each service took to complete its operation and callers can see which services called which.

A key benefit of Zipkin is enabling teams to understand whether backend problems are within their own services or further downstream. For example, if Service A calls Service B which calls Service C, Zipkin would show durations and response codes for each call segment. If Service B was slow, teams can see that in the visualization without needing to log into Service B servers.

Overall, Zipkin gives visibility into distributed systems to improve troubleshooting and performance optimization. It is a helpful open source tool for microservice environments where traditional logging approaches may be difficult across services owned by independent teams.

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