How to integrate with Jaeger on Kubernetes

Last updated: Apr 30, 2024 3 minutes read.

This quick start guide offers a detailed, step-by-step walkthrough for configuring Tyk Gateway OSS with OpenTelemetry and Jaeger on Kubernetes to significantly improve API observability. We will cover the installation of essential components, their configuration, and the process of ensuring seamless integration.

For Docker instructions, please refer to How to integrate with Jaeger on Docker.

Prerequisites

Ensure the following prerequisites are in place before proceeding:

A functional Kubernetes cluster
kubectl and helm CLI tools installed

Step 1: Install Jaeger Operator

For the purpose of this tutorial, we will use jaeger-all-in-one, which includes the Jaeger agent, collector, query, and UI in a single pod with in-memory storage. This deployment is intended for development, testing, and demo purposes. Other deployment patterns can be found in the Jaeger Operator documentation.

Install the cert-manager release manifest (required by Jaeger)


kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.13.2/cert-manager.yaml

Install Jaeger Operator).


kubectl create namespace observability
kubectl create -f https://github.com/jaegertracing/jaeger-operator/releases/download/v1.51.0/jaeger-operator.yaml -n observability

After the Jaeger Operator is deployed to the observability namespace, create a Jaeger instance:


kubectl apply -n observability -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: jaegertracing.io/v1
kind: Jaeger
metadata:
  name: jaeger-all-in-one
EOF

Step 2: Deploy Tyk Gateway with OpenTelemetry Enabled using Helm

To install or upgrade Tyk Gateway OSS using Helm, execute the following commands:


NAMESPACE=tyk
APISecret=foo
TykVersion=v5.3.0
REDIS_BITNAMI_CHART_VERSION=19.0.2

helm upgrade tyk-redis oci://registry-1.docker.io/bitnamicharts/redis -n $NAMESPACE --create-namespace --install --version $REDIS_BITNAMI_CHART_VERSION
helm upgrade tyk-otel tyk-helm/tyk-oss -n $NAMESPACE --create-namespace \
  --install \
  --set global.secrets.APISecret="$APISecret" \
  --set tyk-gateway.gateway.image.tag=$TykVersion \
  --set global.redis.addrs="{tyk-redis-master.$NAMESPACE.svc.cluster.local:6379}" \
  --set global.redis.pass="$(kubectl get secret --namespace $NAMESPACE tyk-redis -o jsonpath='{.data.redis-password}' | base64 -d)" \
  --set tyk-gateway.gateway.opentelemetry.enabled=true \
  --set tyk-gateway.gateway.opentelemetry.exporter="grpc" \
  --set tyk-gateway.gateway.opentelemetry.endpoint="jaeger-all-in-one-collector.observability.svc:4317"

Note

Please make sure you are installing Redis versions that are supported by Tyk. Please refer to Tyk docs to get list of supported versions.

Tyk Gateway is now accessible through service gateway-svc-tyk-oss-tyk-gateway at port 8080 and exports the OpenTelemetry traces to the jaeger-all-in-one-collector service.

Step 3: Deploy Tyk Operator

Deploy Tyk Operator to manage APIs in your cluster:


kubectl create namespace tyk-operator-system
kubectl create secret -n tyk-operator-system generic tyk-operator-conf \
  --from-literal "TYK_AUTH=$APISecret" \
  --from-literal "TYK_ORG=org" \
  --from-literal "TYK_MODE=ce" \
  --from-literal "TYK_URL=http://gateway-svc-tyk-otel-tyk-gateway.tyk.svc:8080" \
  --from-literal "TYK_TLS_INSECURE_SKIP_VERIFY=true"
helm install tyk-operator tyk-helm/tyk-operator -n tyk-operator-system

Step 4: Deploy a Test API Definition

Save the following API definition as apidef-hello-world.yaml:


apiVersion: tyk.tyk.io/v1alpha1
kind: ApiDefinition
metadata:
 name: hello-world
spec:
 name: hello-world
 use_keyless: true
 protocol: http
 active: true
 proxy:
   target_url: http://echo.tyk-demo.com:8080/
   listen_path: /hello-world
   strip_listen_path: true

To apply this API definition, run the following command:


kubectl apply -f apidef-hello-world.yaml

This step deploys an API definition named hello-world using the provided configuration. It enables a keyless HTTP API proxying requests to http://echo.tyk-demo.com:8080/ and accessible via the path /hello-world.

Step 5: Explore OpenTelemetry traces in Jaeger

You can use the kubectl port-forward command to access Tyk and Jaeger services running in the cluster from your local machine’s localhost:

For Tyk API Gateway:


kubectl port-forward service/gateway-svc-tyk-otel-tyk-gateway 8080:8080 -n tyk

For Jaeger:


kubectl port-forward service/jaeger-all-in-one-query 16686 -n observability

Begin by sending a few requests to the API endpoint configured in step 2:


curl http://localhost:8080/hello-world/ -i

Next, navigate to Jaeger on http://localhost:16686, select the ´service´ called ´tyk-gateway´ and click on the button ´Find traces´. You should see traces generated by Tyk:

Tyk API Gateway distributed trace in Jaeger

Click on a trace to view all its internal spans:

Tyk API Gateway spans in Jaeger