In Docker

The easiest way to run Jaeger is by starting a Docker container:

docker run --rm --name jaeger \
  -p 5778:5778 \
  -p 16686:16686 \
  -p 4317:4317 \
  -p 4318:4318 \
  -p 14250:14250 \
  -p 14268:14268 \
  -p 9411:9411 \
  jaegertracing/jaeger:2.0.0 \
  --set receivers.otlp.protocols.http.endpoint=0.0.0.0:4318 \
  --set receivers.otlp.protocols.grpc.endpoint=0.0.0.0:4317

This runs the “all-in-one” configuration of Jaeger (using a configuration file embedded in the binary) that combines collector and query components in a single process and uses a transient in-memory storage for trace data. You can navigate to http://localhost:16686 to access the Jaeger UI. See the APIs page for a list of other exposed ports.

Note: the --set flags are necessary because by default OTLP receiver listens on localhost and therefore is not accessible from the host network even with port mappings. In the future versions the default will be changed to 0.0.0.0.

Instrumentation

Your applications must be instrumented before they can send tracing data to Jaeger. We recommend using the OpenTelemetry  instrumentation and SDKs.

🚗 HotROD Demo

HotROD (Rides on Demand) is a demo application that consists of several microservices and illustrates the use of OpenTelemetry  and distributed tracing. A tutorial / walkthrough is available in the blog post: Take Jaeger for a HotROD ride .

Using this application you can:

• Discover architecture of the whole system via data-driven dependency diagram.
• View request timeline and errors; understand how the app works.
• Find sources of latency and lack of concurrency.
• Explore highly contextualized logging.
• Use baggage propagation to diagnose inter-request contention (queueing) and time spent in a service.
• Use open source libraries from opentelemetry-contrib to get vendor-neutral instrumentation for free.

Running

We recommend running Jaeger and HotROD together via docker compose:

git clone git@github.com:jaegertracing/jaeger.git jaeger
cd jaeger/examples/hotrod
docker compose -f docker-compose-v2.yml up
# Ctrl-C to stop

Then navigate to http://localhost:8080. See the README  for other ways to run the demo.

SPM

The Service Performance Monitoring (SPM) page has its own Quick Start that shows how to explore that aspect of Jaeger.