AWS X-Ray

Concept

AWS X-Ray is a distributed tracing service. When a request travels through different parts of an app (such as API Gateway, Lambda and a database), X-Ray builds a trace (a record of the path) of the whole journey. The trace shows how much time each part took and where errors happened. A picture called the service map shows how the parts of the app are connected to each other. AWS now recommends using an OpenTelemetry-based approach to send trace data.

Simple example

Courier parcel tracking — you can see which offices the parcel went through and where it got stuck.

Why it’s needed

When an app is made of many small services, it is hard to find which one is causing slowness or errors.

Where it’s used

Finding the slow part of a microservice app, seeing where an error started.

Azure equivalent

Azure Application Insights

Remember

X-Ray = tracking of a request’s journey. (AWS is now moving toward an OpenTelemetry-based approach for this.)

Learn more

For details and the latest information, see the official documentation:

• AWS X-Ray — AWS official documentation ↗