Distributed tracing, a key component of observability, helps understand complex systems by representing the end-to-end request flow through distributed systems. Observability tools come in two varieties, DIY (open-source build-it-yourself) and commercial offerings, each with its pros and cons. While open-source tools provide a simple way to start monitoring applications and services, they require dedicated engineers for maintenance and updates. Commercial products alleviate this burden, providing out-of-the-box dashboards and alleviating the need for engineering teams to maintain their own observability stack. In addition, as application delivery models evolve from monolithic apps to microservices, distributed tracing solves the challenge of observability in these complex systems by representing individual units of work done in a distributed system, known as spans. Consul Service Mesh provides service-to-service connection authorization and encryption using mutual TLS, helping secure services and provide data about service-to-service communications. By leveraging the observability features of Envoy proxy or instrumenting code directly, developers can apply distributed tracing to achieve one of the Three Pillars of Observability.