Distributed Tracing Explained: OpenTelemetry & Jaeger Tutorial

Distributed tracing solves the visibility problem in microservices architectures where traditional metrics fail to reveal why some requests are slow. OpenTelemetry provides the standard for implementing tracing through traces (complete request journeys), spans (individual operations), and context propagation (linking operations across services). The tutorial covers automatic vs. manual instrumentation, demonstrates real examples using Jaeger UI, explains key concepts like trace IDs, span kinds, semantic conventions, and sampling strategies. Manual instrumentation is recommended over automatic for production systems to capture business-relevant operations while controlling overhead.