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How to Deploy Jaeger on AWS EC2: a Step-by-Step Guide

How to Deploy Jaeger on AWS EC2: a Step-by-Step Guide
Photo by Rohan Reddy / Unsplash

Jaeger is an open-source distributed tracing system that is used to monitor and troubleshoot microservices-based architectures. Deploying Jaeger on AWS can help to improve the visibility and performance of your applications.

In this article, we will provide a step-by-step guide on how to deploy Jaeger on AWS.

Step 1: Set up an AWS Account

The first step in deploying Jaeger on AWS is to set up an AWS account. If you already have an AWS account, you can skip this step. Otherwise, you can sign up for a free AWS account at aws.amazon.com.

Step 2: Launch an EC2 Instance

The next step is to launch an EC2 instance on AWS. An EC2 instance is a virtual machine that runs on the AWS cloud. You can use any EC2 instance type, but we recommend using a t2.micro instance for testing purposes.

To launch an EC2 instance, follow these steps:

  1. Go to the EC2 dashboard in the AWS Management Console.
  2. Click on the "Launch Instance" button.
  3. Choose the Amazon Linux 2 AMI.
  4. Select the t2.micro instance type.
  5. Configure the instance details and storage.
  6. Configure the security group to allow inbound traffic on port 22 for SSH access and port 16686 for Jaeger access.
  7. Launch the instance and create a new key pair.

Step 3: Install Jaeger

Once your EC2 instance is up and running, you can install Jaeger on it. Follow these steps:

  1. Connect to your EC2 instance using SSH.
  2. Update the system packages by running the command: sudo yum update -y
  3. Install Jaeger by running the command: sudo yum install jaeger-all -y
  4. Verify that Jaeger is installed by running the command: jaeger-all --version

Step 4: Configure Jaeger

After installing Jaeger, you need to configure it to work with your applications. Follow these steps:

  1. Open the Jaeger configuration file by running the command: sudo vi /etc/jaeger/agent.yaml
  2. Edit the configuration file to specify the correct collector endpoint and sampling rate. For example, you can set the following values:
  collector:
    endpoint: "http://your-collector-endpoint:14268/api/traces"
  sampler:
    type: "const"
    param: 1

3.   Save the configuration file and exit.

Step 5: Start the Jaeger Agent

After configuring Jaeger, you need to start the Jaeger agent. The Jaeger agent is responsible for receiving trace data from your applications and forwarding it to the Jaeger collector.

Follow these steps to start the Jaeger agent:

  1. Open a new terminal window and connect to your EC2 instance using SSH.
  2. Start the Jaeger agent by running the command: sudo systemctl start jaeger-agent

Step 6: Access the Jaeger UI

Once the Jaeger agent is running, you can access the Jaeger UI to view your trace data. Follow these steps:

  1. Open a web browser and navigate to http://your-ec2-instance-public-ip:16686
  2. The Jaeger UI should load, and you can start exploring your trace data.

Step 7: Integrate Jaeger with Your Applications

Finally, you need to integrate Jaeger with your applications to start collecting trace data. To do this, you need to add the Jaeger client libraries to your application code and configure them to send trace data to the Jaeger agent.

The exact process for integrating Jaeger with your applications will depend on the programming language and framework you are using. However, most Jaeger client libraries have similar APIs and can be integrated with minimal changes to your application code.

For example, if you are using Node.js, you can install the Jaeger client library using npm:

npm install --save jaeger-client

Then, you can configure the Jaeger client by adding the following code to your application:

const initJaegerTracer = require('jaeger-client').initTracer;

const config = {
  serviceName: 'my-service',
  sampler: {
    type: 'const',
    param: 1,
  },
  reporter: {
    agentHost: 'localhost',
    agentPort: 6832,
  },
};

const options = {};

const tracer = initJaegerTracer(config, options);

This code initializes the Jaeger tracer with a sampler that always samples traces and a reporter that sends trace data to the Jaeger agent running on the local machine.

Once you have integrated Jaeger with your applications, you can start collecting and analyzing trace data to improve the performance and reliability of your microservices.

Conclusion

Deploying Jaeger on AWS can help you gain visibility into your microservices-based architectures and troubleshoot performance issues. In this article, we provided a step-by-step guide on how to deploy Jaeger on AWS and integrate it with your applications.

By following these steps, you can set up a distributed tracing system that can help you improve the performance and reliability of your applications running on AWS.

Ramadan Khalifa

Ramadan Khalifa

Berlin