Splunk Inc.
Tracking error propagation across microservices based applications using distributed error stacks

Abstract:

A method of performing error analysis in a system comprising microservices comprises identifying a root cause error span from among a plurality of error spans for a trace associated with a user-request, wherein an error span is a span that returns an error to a microservice initiating a call resulting in the span, and wherein a root cause error span is an error span associated with an error originating microservice. The method further comprises determining a call path associated with the root cause error span, where the call path comprises a chain of spans starting at the root cause error span, and where each subsequent span in the chain is a parent span of a prior span. Subsequently the method comprises mapping each span in the chain to a span error frame to create an error stack and rendering an image of the error stack.