To monitor end-to-end requests and debug issues acrossmicroservices, you needdistributed tracing. Among AWS tools,AWS X-Rayis specifically built for this use case.
Step-by-Step Breakdown:
Step 1: Understand the Requirement
The developer needs:
End-to-end request tracingacross microservices
Debugging capabilityfor performance issues or failures
This points directly to adistributed tracing solutionrather than just logs or metrics.
Step 2: Evaluate the Options
Option A: Amazon CloudWatch
CloudWatch is powerful formetrics,logs, andalerts.
But it does not providedistributed tracingorrequest path visualizationbetween microservices.
So, it'snot sufficient alonefor the requirement.
Option B: AWS CloudTrail
CloudTrail tracksAPI callsmade through the AWS Management Console, CLI, SDKs.
It is meant forauditing and governance, not microservices request tracing.
Not suitable for debugging microservices interactions.
Option C: AWS X-Ray SDK with X-Ray service map
✅Purpose-built fordistributed tracing
Automatically collects data about requestsas they travel through your microservices
You caninstrumentyour code with the AWS X-Ray SDK inJava, Node.js, Python, Go, .NET, etc.
Visualizes requests using aservice map, showing latency, errors, and time spent in downstream services.
How it works:
Instrument each microserviceusing the AWS X-Ray SDK.
Use the SDK totrace requests, propagate trace headers across services.
TheX-Ray daemoncollects and sends trace data to the X-Ray service.
You can view theservice map, see bottlenecks, error rates, etc.
Option D: AWS Health
AWS Health provides information onAWS service outagesor account-level events.
It doesnotmonitor yourapplication or microserviceshealth or request flows.
Correct Choice: Cis the only option that meets the developer's requirement to monitorend-to-end request pathsand debug issues in amicroservicesarchitecture.
AWS Developer References:
AWS X-Ray Documentation:https://docs.aws.amazon.com/xray/latest/devguide/aws-xray.html
Instrumenting your application:https://docs.aws.amazon.com/xray/latest/devguide/xray-sdk.html
Viewing the Service Map:https://docs.aws.amazon.com/xray/latest/devguide/xray-console-service-map.html
Tracing Microservices with AWS X-Ray:https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/tracing-microservices-aws-x-ray/
