Distributed tracing: how to track a request's path in microservice architecture

In microservice architectures, monitoring individual service health is often insufficient. Distributed tracing is essential for deep performance analysis and identifying the root causes of errors in distributed systems. This Habr article explores the core concepts of this approach, including the structure of Traces and Spans, mechanisms for propagating tracing context between services, and the role of the OpenTelemetry standard in data collection and visualization. The author explains why tracing is critical for understanding the lifecycle of a specific request and how it helps identify bottlenecks where the system loses time. This material is valuable for developers and DevOps engineers looking to improve system observability and simplify the debugging process for complex distributed applications.