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Traces help you investigate how requests move across supported DigitalOcean services and resources. You can search and filter trace data, review request latency and errors, and inspect individual operations to troubleshoot application behavior.

To access traces, go to the DigitalOcean Control Panel, in the left menu, click DATA & LEARNING, click Insights, and then click the Traces tab.

The Traces tab displays trace activity over the selected time range, with a chart at the top and a results table below. You can view the results in two ways:

• Traces displays complete request paths. Each trace contains one or more spans that show how the request was processed across services.
• Spans displays individual operations within traces.

Enable Insights During Resource Creation

After you opt in to the public preview, you can enable the available Insights telemetry from the resource creation page when you create a supported DigitalOcean resource. For Droplets and GPU Droplets, select Install the Observability agent to install the agent during resource creation. This enables logs and trace data for the resource, which you can disable later if needed.

For supported managed resources that do not require the Observability agent, the resource creation page displays the available logs and traces options directly. When creating Managed Agents resources, Insights is enabled by default.

Set the Region

At the top of the Traces tab, click the Region dropdown menu to select the region whose traces you want to view. Traces return data from one region at a time.

Set the Time Range and Refresh Interval

The time range, timezone, and refresh interval apply to the traces and spans displayed on the Traces tab.

Set the Time Range

To set the time range, in the top-right corner, click the Time range dropdown menu to select a relative range from Last 5 minutes through Last 7 days, or specify an absolute From and To range.

Use the Timezone field to select the timezone used to display metric timestamps. The default is your local browser timezone.

Set the Refresh Interval

To set the refresh interval, in the top-right corner, click the Refresh interval dropdown menu to select Off, 15 sec, 30 sec, or 60 sec.

Click the refresh icon to refresh the metric data immediately.

Filter Traces

To filter the trace data displayed, use the Filters section on the left:

• Status filters by trace or span status. Select ERROR or OK.
• Service filters by the service associated with the trace or span.
• Duration filters results by duration. Drag the minimum and maximum values on the slider to set the duration range.
• Attributes filters by span attributes. Click Add attribute, and then search for or select an available attribute.

To clear a filter, click Clear next to the corresponding filter section. To remove all selected filters, click Clear all filters at the bottom of the Filters section.

View a Trace

Above the results table, click Spans or Traces to switch between individual operations and complete request flows.

When viewing spans, the table displays the Span name, Service, Duration, Status, Time, and Trace ID for each span.

When viewing traces, the table displays the Trace ID, Root service, Duration, Spans, Status, and Time for each trace.

View Spans Table

To inspect a span without leaving the results page, in the Spans table, click > on the left side of the span.

The expanded span displays its Span Name, Trace ID, Span ID, Parent Span ID, Service Name, Start Time, End Time, Duration, and Status.

In the Filter attributes section, use the search field to find an attribute.

For structured values, click Expand JSON to inspect their contents.

To investigate the span in the context of its complete trace, switch to the Traces table, and then open the corresponding trace.

To view a span’s details, in the top-right of the span, click View details. The trace details page displays the following sections:

• Trace timeline shows the spans that make up the trace and their durations. Click a span to view its details.
• Span details displays attributes for the selected span. Use the search field or the All, Span, and Resource tabs to narrow the displayed attributes.
• Associated logs displays logs that share the same trace ID. Click View all logs to open the related logs in the Logs tab.

To share the trace, click Share trace in the top-right corner.

View Traces Table

In the Traces table, click > on the left side of a trace to expand it.

The expanded trace displays its duration, number of spans, participating services, status, and its trace timeline. Parent and child spans are organized hierarchically to show how the request moved between operations and services.

In the Trace timeline section, click > next to a span to expand it. The expanded span displays its span name, trace ID, span ID, parent span ID when applicable, service name, start and end times, duration, status, attributes, and events.

Use the search field in the Attributes subsection to find an attribute, and click All, Span, or Resource to filter the attributes displayed.

To view a trace’s details, click View details. The trace details page displays the following sections:

• Trace timeline shows the spans that make up the trace and their durations. Click a span to view its details.
• Span details displays attributes for the selected span. Use the search field or the All, Span, and Resource tabs to narrow the displayed attributes.
• Associated logs displays logs that share the same trace ID. Click View all logs to open the related logs in the Logs tab.

To share the trace, click Share trace in the top-right corner.