VMWare Tanzu Application Service - Zipkin Tracing Express/NodeJS Sample App

This repository contains three applications built using express and nodeJS:

These apps use Zipkin to trace the calls between them.

The following instrumentation frameworks are leveraged in the apps:

The traces can then be viewed using cf logs <app_name> or using tools such as VMWare Tanzu AppMetrics, Zipkin Server, and Splunk.

Prerequisites

Zipkin Server

To demo this application, a Zipkin Server is required and must be running to forward spans traced by the apps

The following link contains the steps necessary to download the Zipkin Server JAR: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin#quick-start

First, download the JAR using the quick-start guide (NOTE: You can also view the releases here at this link:

curl -sSL https://zipkin.io/quickstart.sh | bash -s

Next, push the JAR to PCF to deploy the zipkin-server:

cf push zipkin-server -p zipkin.jar

Validate that the zipkin server was deployed successfully:

cf app zipkin-server                                 
Showing health and status for app zipkin-server in org dev / space dev as admin...

name:              zipkin-server
requested state:   started
routes:            zipkin-server.apps.mjenk.io
last uploaded:     Wed 05 May 10:16:21 CDT 2021
stack:             cflinuxfs3
buildpacks:        
        name                     version                                                                     detect output   buildpack name
        java_buildpack_offline   v4.36-offline-https://github.com/cloudfoundry/java-buildpack.git#ebf9f057   java            java
type:           web
sidecars:       
instances:      1/1
memory usage:   1024M
     state     since                  cpu    memory         disk           details
#0   running   2021-05-05T15:17:08Z   0.2%   312.7M of 1G   172.2M of 1G

Once the zipkin-server has been successfully deployed, proceed to the next section.

Using the sample apps

1) UPDATE DEPLOYMENT MANIFEST

Prior to deploying the sample apps, first UPDATE the deployment manifest.yml and REPLACE the following with your environment's specific configuration for the following values:

  ...
  env:
    ZIPKIN_SERVER_HOST: <zipkin-server-url>
    PAYMENTS_HOST: <payments-app-url>
    ORDERS_HOST: <orders-app-url>

You may also update other values within the deployment manifest as needed

DEPLOY

To deploy, you must login as a user that has the ability to assign space permissions and make spaces. It will create a given shopping-cart, orders, and payments app that can be used to preview an example trace.

To deploy, run:

cf push

TEST APPS

The following diagram depicts call flow for this application

Step 1)

In your browser, navigate to /checkout or curl the /checkout endpoint for the given Shopping Cart app.

You should receive a 200 OK message that says card successfully charged!

Step 2)

After hitting the /checkout endpoint, navigate to the zipkin-server UI using the Route that was created when you pushed the zipkin-server app

VISUALIZE TRACES & DEPENDENCIES

Below depicts an example of the shopping-cart trace in the Zipkin Server UI:

CLEANUP

To cleanup, run:

cf delete payments -f -r
cf delete orders -f -r
cf delete shopping-cart -f -r

mjenk664/pcf-zipkin-nodejs-demo