| description | Distributed tracing with Zipkin |
|---|---|
| icon | magnifying-glass-chart |
Spice supports distributed tracing by integrating with Zipkin and compatible tracing systems. Traces capture completed tasks — SQL queries, AI chat completions, tool calls, dataset refreshes — recording execution time, inputs, outputs, and errors.
Enable Zipkin tracing by configuring the runtime.tracing section in your app's spicepod.yaml:
runtime:
tracing:
zipkin_enabled: true
zipkin_endpoint: "http://your_zipkin_host:9411/api/v2/spans"| Parameter | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
zipkin_enabled |
false |
Enables or disables Zipkin trace export. |
zipkin_endpoint |
— | Required if enabled. The /api/v2/spans endpoint on your Zipkin instance. |
Trace data will be available in the Zipkin UI at http://your_zipkin_host:9411. See the Zipkin Quickstart to run a test server.
A trace in Spice represents a completed task. Each trace is a unique span recording execution time, inputs, outputs, and errors.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
trace_id |
Unique identifier for the trace |
span_id |
Unique identifier for the span |
task |
Task type (e.g. sql_query, text_embed, health) |
start_time |
When the task started |
end_time |
When the task completed |
execution_duration_ms |
Execution duration in milliseconds |
error_message |
Error details, if the task failed |
Example trace data:
trace_id | task | execution_duration_ms | error_message
----------------------------------|---------------------|-----------------------|------------------------------------------
687e0970f8c49d19c5a08764ea2d4dc1 | text_embed | 16132.4 |
1e881188e5fd252b26adb8a8d838efb8 | sql_query | 6.1 |
701874d7282dd47791e7519b343a9694 | accelerated_refresh | 0.4 |
3c75d16b6b4b8da98c551d115e1c049c | sql_query | 0.1 | SQL error: ParserError("Expected:...")
For more details, see Task History.
See also:
- Portal Monitoring - Built-in monitoring in the Spice.ai portal
- Metrics API - Prometheus-compatible metrics endpoint