Viewing traces and trace details

Use the Traces page in the X-Ray console to find traces by URL, response code, or other data from the trace summary. After selecting a trace from the trace list, the Trace details page displays a map of service nodes that are associated with the selected trace and a timeline of trace segments.

Viewing traces

CloudWatch console

To view traces in the CloudWatch console

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the CloudWatch console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/.

2. In the left navigation pane, choose X-Ray traces, then choose Traces. You can filter by group or enter a filter expression. This filters the traces that are displayed in the Traces section at the bottom of the page.

   Alternatively, you can use the service map to navigate to a specific service node, and then view traces. This opens the Traces page with a query already applied.

3. Refine your query in the Query refiners section. To filter traces by a common attribute, choose an option from the down arrow next to Refine query by. The options include the following:

   • Node – Filter traces by service node.

   • Resource ARN – Filter traces by a resource associated with a trace. Examples of these resources include Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance, an AWS Lambda function, or an Amazon DynamoDB table.

   • User – Filter traces with a user ID.

   • Error root cause message – Filter traces by error root cause.

   • URL – Filter traces by a URL path used by your application.

   • HTTP status code – Filter traces by the HTTP status code returned by your application. You can specify a custom response code or select from the following:

     • 200 – The request was successful.

     • 401 – The request lacked valid authentication credentials.

     • 403 – The request lacked valid permissions.

     • 404 – The server could not find the requested resource.

     • 500 – The server encountered an unexpected condition and generated an internal error.

   Choose one or more entries and then choose Add to query to add to the filter expression at the top of the page.

4. To find a single trace, enter a trace ID directly into the query field. You can use X-Ray format or World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) format. For example, a trace that's created using the AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry is in W3C format.

   Note

   When you query traces that are created with a W3C-format trace ID, the console displays the matching trace in X-Ray format. For example, if you query for 4efaaf4d1e8720b39541901950019ee5 in W3C format, the console displays the X-Ray equivalent: 1-4efaaf4d-1e8720b39541901950019ee5.

5. Choose Run query at any time to display a list of matching traces within the Traces section at the bottom of the page.

6. To display the Trace details page for a single trace, select a trace ID from the list.

   The following image shows a Trace map containing service nodes associated with the trace and edges between the nodes representing the path taken by segments that compose the trace. A Trace summary follows the Trace Map. The summary contains information about a sample GET operation, its Response Code, the Duration that the trace took to run, and the Age of the request. The Segments Timeline follows the Trace Summary that shows the duration of trace segments and subsegments.

   

   If you have an event-driven application that uses Amazon SQS and Lambda, you can see a connected view of traces for each request in the Trace map. In the map, traces from message producers are linked to traces from AWS Lambda consumers and are displayed as a dashed-line edge. For more information about event-driven applications, see Tracing event-driven applications.

   The Traces and Trace details pages also support cross-account tracing, which can list traces from multiple accounts in the trace list and inside a single trace map.

X-Ray console

To view traces in the X-Ray console

1. Open the Traces page in the X-Ray console. The Trace overview panel shows a list of traces that are grouped by common features including Error root causes, ResourceARN, and InstanceId.

2. To select a common feature to view a grouped set of traces, expand the down arrow next to Group by. The following illustration shows a trace overview of traces that are grouped by URL for the AWS X-Ray sample application, and a list of associated traces.

   

3. Choose the ID of a trace to view it under the Trace list. You can also choose Service map in the navigation pane to view traces for a specific service node. Then you can view traces that are associated with that node.

   The Timeline tab shows the request flow for the trace, and includes the following:

   • A map of the path for each segment in the trace.

   • How long it took for the segment to reach a node in the trace map.

   • How many requests were made to the node in the trace map.

   The following illustration shows an example Trace Map associated with a GET request made to a sample application. The arrows show the path that each segment took to complete the request. The service nodes show the number of requests made during the GET request.

   

   For more information about the Timeline tab, see the following Exploring the trace timeline section.

   The Raw data tab shows information about the trace, and the segments and subsegments that compose the trace, in JSON format. This information may include the following:

   • Timestamps

   • Unique IDs

   • Resources associated with the segment or subsegment

   • The source, or origin, of the segment or subsegment

   • Additional information about the request to your application such as the response from an HTTP request

Exploring the trace timeline

The Timeline section shows a hierarchy of segments and subsegments next to a horizontal bar that corresponds to time they used to complete their tasks. The first entry in the list is the segment, which represents all data recorded by the service for a single request. Subsegments are indented and listed following the segment. Columns contain information about each segment.

CloudWatch console

In the CloudWatch console, the Segments Timeline provides the following information:

• The first column: Lists the segments and subsegments in the selected trace.

• The Segment status column: Lists the status outcome of each segment and subsegment.

• The Response code column: Lists an HTTP response status code to a browser request made by the segment or subsegment, when available.

• The Duration column: Lists how long the segment or subsegment ran.

• The Hosted in column: Lists the namespace or environment where the segment or subsegment is ran, if applicable. For more information, see Dimensions collected and dimension combinations.

• The last column: Displays horizontal bars that correspond to the duration that the segment or subsegment ran, in relation to the other segments or subsegments in the timeline.

To group the list of segments and subsegments by service node, turn on Group by nodes.

X-Ray console

In the trace details page, choose the Timeline tab to see the timeline for each segment and subsegment that makes up a trace.

In the X-Ray console, the Timeline provides the following information:

• The Name column: Lists the names of the segments and subsegments in the trace.

• The Res. column: Lists an HTTP response status code to a browser request made by the segment or subsegment, when available.

• The Duration column: Lists how long the segment or subsegment ran.

• The Status column: Lists the outcome of the segment or subsegment status.

• The last column: Displays horizontal bars that correspond to the duration that the segment or subsegment ran, in relation to the other segments or subsegments in the timeline.

To see the raw trace data that the console uses to generate the timeline, choose the Raw data tab. The raw data shows you information about the trace, and the segments and subsegments that compose the trace in JSON format. This information may include the following:

• Timestamps

• Unique IDs

• Resources associated with the segment or subsegment

• The source, or origin, of the segment or subsegment

• Additional information about the request to your application such as the response from an HTTP request.

When you use an instrumented AWS SDK, HTTP, or SQL client to make calls to external resources, the X-Ray SDK records subsegments automatically. You can also use the X-Ray SDK to record custom subsegments for any function or block of code. Additional subsegments that are recorded while a custom subsegment are open become children of the custom subsegment.

Viewing segment details

From the trace Timeline, choose the name of a segment to view its details.

The Segment details panel shows the Overview, Resources, Annotations, Metadata, Exceptions, and SQL tabs. The following apply:

• The Overview tab shows information about the request and response. Information includes the name, start time, end time, duration, the request URL, request operation, request response code, and any errors and faults.

• The Resources tab for a segment shows information from the X-Ray SDK and about the AWS resources running your application. Use the Amazon EC2, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, or Amazon ECS plugins for the X-Ray SDK to record service-specific resource information. For more information about plugins, see the Service plugins section in Configuring the X-Ray SDK for Java.

• The remaining tabs show Annotations, Metadata, and Exceptions that are recorded for the segment. Exceptions are captured automatically when they are generated from an instrumented request. Annotations and metadata contain additional information that you record by using the operations that the X-Ray SDK provides. To add annotations or metadata to your segments, use the X-Ray SDK. For more information, see the language-specific link listed under Instrumenting your application with AWS X-Ray SDKs in Instrumenting your application for AWS X-Ray.

Viewing subsegment details

From the trace timeline, choose the name of a subsegment to view its details:

• The Overview tab contains information about the request and response. This includes the name, start time, end time, duration, the request URL, request operation, request response code, and any errors and faults. For subsegments generated with instrumented clients, the Overview tab contains information about the request and response from your application's point of view.

• The Resources tab for a subsegment shows details about the AWS resources that were used to run the subsegment. For example, the resources tab may include an AWS Lambda function ARN, information about a DynamoDB table, any operation that is called, and request ID.

• The remaining tabs show Annotations, Metadata, and Exceptions recorded on the subsegment. Exceptions are captured automatically when they are generated from an instrumented request. Annotations and metadata contain additional information that you record by using the operations that the X-Ray SDK provides. Use the X-Ray SDK to add annotations or metadata to your segments. For more information, see the language-specific link listed under Instrumenting your application with AWS X-Ray SDKs in Instrumenting your application for AWS X-Ray.

For custom subsegments, the Overview tab shows the name of the subsegment, which you can set to specify the area of the code or function that it records. For more information, see the language-specific link listed under Instrumenting your application with AWS X-Ray SDKs in Generating custom subsegments with the X-Ray SDK for Java.

The following image shows the Overview tab for a custom subsegment. The overview contains the subsegment ID, parent ID, Name, start and end times, duration, status and errors or faults.

The Metadata tab for a custom subsegment contains information in JSON format about resources used by that subsegment.