What Is Distributed Tracing and How Jaeger Tracing Is Solving Its Challenges

Jaeger's Service Performance Monitoring (SPM) feature is a welcome addition to the Jaeger UI, providing easy access to aggregated RED metrics from traces. It offers a high-level overview of service-level operations and allows for direct analysis in Jaeger's Tracing tab. SPM changes distributed tracing by aggregating metrics from collected traces, reducing skewing issues due to sampling rates. This feature is particularly useful when combined with OpenTelemetry Collector and Promscale, offering a unified storage backend for metrics and traces. By using PostgreSQL with Promscale, users can benefit from full Jaeger support, first-class Prometheus support, flexible storage options, and a rock-solid foundation built on mature technologies.