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Distributed tracing is the process of mapping and analyzing requests as they flow through a distributed system. Use the following documentation to learn about how to interact with trace data in Palo Alto Networks Cortex XCOR.

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Ingest

Cortex XCOR supports ingesting trace data with both the Chronosphere Collector and the OpenTelemetry Collector. An added benefit of using the OpenTelemetry Collector is configuring head sampling, which is a powerful control mechanism for managing your tracing costs.

Ingest data

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Control

Use Trace Optimization to narrow your focus to only a representative sample of your data and drop everything else. Identify and evaluate data, and then sample the overall dataset to eliminate waste, unnecessary noise, and cost.

Control data

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Query

Learn how to construct queries in Trace Explorer to search for traces and spans to help identify, triage, and understand the root cause of problems. See the features overview to learn more about the capabilities that Trace Explorer provides.

Query data

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Observe

Create standard dashboards query and visualize log data queries. You can also create alerts to watch time series data that’s specified in a monitor query, and receive notifications when the query matches specified logs.

Observe data

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Analyze

Analyze your trace data to gain insights, understand the value of your data semantics, and highlight changes and their impacts. Use Cortex XCOR Differential Diagnosis (DDx) to identify issues behind suspicious trends.

Analyze data

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Connect

Create links to related data from other parts of Cortex XCOR, such as linking to logs from traces and linking to traces from dashboards.

Create links