Trace Azure IoT device-to-cloud messages by using distributed tracing (preview)

Article
03/16/2023

Microsoft Azure IoT Hub currently supports distributed tracing as a preview feature.

IoT Hub is one of the first Azure services to support distributed tracing. As more Azure services support distributed tracing, you're able to trace Internet of Things (IoT) messages throughout the Azure services involved in your solution. For a background on the feature, see What is distributed tracing?.

When you enable distributed tracing for IoT Hub, you can:

Precisely monitor the flow of each message through IoT Hub by using trace context. Trace context includes correlation IDs that allow you to correlate events from one component with events from another component. You can apply it for a subset or all IoT device messages by using a device twin.
Automatically log the trace context to Azure Monitor Logs.
Measure and understand message flow and latency from devices to IoT Hub and routing endpoints.
Start considering how you want to implement distributed tracing for the non-Azure services in your IoT solution.

In this article, you use the Azure IoT device SDK for C with distributed tracing. Distributed tracing support is still in progress for the other SDKs.

Prerequisites

The preview of distributed tracing is currently supported only for IoT hubs created in the following regions:
- North Europe
- Southeast Asia
- West US 2
This article assumes that you're familiar with sending telemetry messages to your IoT hub. Make sure you've completed the quickstart for sending telemetry in C.
Register a device with your IoT hub and save the connection string. Registration steps are available in the quickstart.
Install the latest version of Git.

Configure an IoT hub

In this section, you configure an IoT hub to log distributed tracing attributes (correlation IDs and time stamps).

Go to your IoT hub in the Azure portal.
On the left pane for your IoT hub, scroll down to the Monitoring section and select Diagnostics settings.
Select Add diagnostic setting.
In the Diagnostic setting name box, enter a name for a new diagnostic setting. For example, enter DistributedTracingSettings.
Choose one or more of the following options under Destination details to determine where to send logging information:
- Archive to a storage account: Configure a storage account to contain the logging information.
- Stream to an event hub: Configure an event hub to contain the logging information.
- Send to Log Analytics: Configure a Log Analytics workspace to contain the logging information.
In the Logs section, select the operations that you want to log.

Include Distributed Tracing and configure a Retention period for how many days you want the logging retained. Log retention affects storage costs.
Select Save for this new setting.
(Optional) To see the messages flow to different places, set up routing rules to at least two different endpoints.

After the logging is turned on, IoT Hub records a log when a message that contains valid trace properties is encountered in any of the following situations:

The message arrives at the IoT hub's gateway.
The IoT hub processes the message.
The message is routed to custom endpoints. Routing must be enabled.

To learn more about these logs and their schemas, see Monitor IoT Hub and Distributed tracing in IoT Hub resource logs.

Set up a device

In this section, you prepare a development environment for use with the Azure IoT C SDK. Then, you modify one of the samples to enable distributed tracing on your device's telemetry messages.

These instructions are for building the sample on Windows. For other environments, see Compile the C SDK or Prepackaged C SDK for Platform Specific Development.

Clone the source code and initialize

Install the Desktop development with C++ workload for Visual Studio 2022. Visual Studio 2019 is also supported.
Install CMake. Ensure that it's in your PATH by entering cmake -version from a command prompt.
Open a command prompt or Git Bash shell. Run the following commands to clone the latest release of the Azure IoT C SDK GitHub repository:
```
git clone -b public-preview https://github.com/Azure/azure-iot-sdk-c.git
cd azure-iot-sdk-c
git submodule update --init
```
Expect this operation to take several minutes to finish.
Run the following commands from the azure-iot-sdk-c directory to create a cmake subdirectory and go to the cmake folder:
```
mkdir cmake
cd cmake
cmake ..
```
If CMake can't find your C++ compiler, you might encounter build errors while running the preceding command. If that happens, try running the command in the Visual Studio command prompt.

After the build succeeds, the last few output lines will look similar to the following output:
```
$ cmake ..
-- Building for: Visual Studio 15 2017
-- Selecting Windows SDK version 10.0.16299.0 to target Windows 10.0.17134.
-- The C compiler identification is MSVC 19.12.25835.0
-- The CXX compiler identification is MSVC 19.12.25835.0

...

-- Configuring done
-- Generating done
-- Build files have been written to: E:/IoT Testing/azure-iot-sdk-c/cmake
```

Edit the telemetry sample to enable distributed tracing

Get the sample on GitHub

Use an editor to open the azure-iot-sdk-c/iothub_client/samples/iothub_ll_telemetry_sample/iothub_ll_telemetry_sample.c source file.

Find the declaration of the connectionString constant:

/* Paste in the your iothub connection string  */
static const char* connectionString = "[device connection string]";
#define MESSAGE_COUNT        5000
static bool g_continueRunning = true;
static size_t g_message_count_send_confirmations = 0;

Replace the value of the connectionString constant with the device connection string that you saved in the Register a device section of the quickstart for sending telemetry.

Find the line of code that calls IoTHubDeviceClient_LL_SetConnectionStatusCallback to register a connection status callback function before the send message loop. Add code under that line to call IoTHubDeviceClient_LL_EnablePolicyConfiguration and enable distributed tracing for the device:
```
// Setting connection status callback to get indication of connection to iothub
(void)IoTHubDeviceClient_LL_SetConnectionStatusCallback(device_ll_handle, connection_status_callback, NULL);

// Enabled the distrubted tracing policy for the device
(void)IoTHubDeviceClient_LL_EnablePolicyConfiguration(device_ll_handle, POLICY_CONFIGURATION_DISTRIBUTED_TRACING, true);

do
{
    if (messages_sent < MESSAGE_COUNT)
```
The IoTHubDeviceClient_LL_EnablePolicyConfiguration function enables policies for specific IoT Hub features that are configured via device twins. After you enable POLICY_CONFIGURATION_DISTRIBUTED_TRACING by using the extra line of code, the tracing behavior of the device will reflect distributed tracing changes made on the device twin.

To keep the sample app running without using up all your quota, add a one-second delay at the end of the send message loop:

    else if (g_message_count_send_confirmations >= MESSAGE_COUNT)
    {
        // After all messages are all received stop running
        g_continueRunning = false;
    }

    IoTHubDeviceClient_LL_DoWork(device_ll_handle);
    ThreadAPI_Sleep(1000);

} while (g_continueRunning);

Compile and run

Go to the iothub_ll_telemetry_sample project directory from the CMake directory (azure-iot-sdk-c/cmake) that you created earlier, and compile the sample:
```
cd iothub_client/samples/iothub_ll_telemetry_sample
cmake --build . --target iothub_ll_telemetry_sample --config Debug
```
Run the application. The device sends telemetry that supports distributed tracing.
```
Debug/iothub_ll_telemetry_sample.exe
```
Keep the app running. You can observe the message being sent to IoT Hub by looking at the console window.

Workaround for third-party clients

Implementing the distributed tracing feature without using the C SDK is more complex. We don't recommend it.

First, you must implement all the IoT Hub protocol primitives in your messages by following the developer guide Create and read IoT Hub messages. Then, edit the protocol properties in the MQTT and AMQP messages to add tracestate as a system property.

Specifically:

For MQTT, add %24.tracestate=timestamp%3d1539243209 to the message topic. Replace 1539243209 with the creation time of the message in Unix time-stamp format. As an example, refer to the implementation in the C SDK.
For AMQP, add key("tracestate") and value("timestamp=1539243209") as message annotation. For a reference implementation, see the uamqp_messaging.c file.

To control the percentage of messages that contain this property, implement logic to listen to cloud-initiated events such as twin updates.

Update sampling options

To change the percentage of messages to be traced from the cloud, you must update the device twin. You can make updates by using the JSON editor in the Azure portal or the IoT Hub service SDK. The following subsections provide examples.

Update by using the portal

Go to your IoT hub in the Azure portal, and then select Devices from the menu.
Choose your device.
Under Distributed Tracing (preview), select the gear icon. In the panel that opens:
1. Select the Enable option.
2. For Sampling rate, choose a percentage between 0 and 100.
3. Select Save.
Wait a few seconds, and then select Refresh. If the device successfully acknowledges your changes, a sync icon with a check mark appears.
Go back to the console window for the telemetry message app. Confirm that messages are being sent with tracestate in the application properties.
(Optional) Change the sampling rate to a different value, and observe the change in frequency that messages include tracestate in the application properties.

Update by using the Azure IoT Hub extension for Visual Studio Code

With Visual Studio Code installed, install the latest version of the Azure IoT Hub extension for Visual Studio Code.
Open Visual Studio Code, and go to the Explorer tab and the Azure IoT Hub section.
Select the ellipsis (...) next to Azure IoT Hub to see a submenu. Choose the Select IoT Hub option to retrieve your IoT hub from Azure.

In the pop-up window that appears at the top of Visual Studio Code, you can select your subscription and IoT hub.

See a demonstration on the vscode-azure-iot-toolkit GitHub page.
Expand your device under Devices. Right-click Distributed Tracing Setting (Preview), and then select Update Distributed Tracing Setting (Preview).
In the pop-up pane that appears at the top of the window, select Enable.

Enable Distributed Tracing: Enabled now appears under Distributed Tracing Setting (Preview) > Desired.
In the pop-up pane that appears for the sampling rate, enter 100 and then select the Enter key.

Sample rate: 100(%) now also appears under Distributed Tracing Setting (Preview) > Desired.

Bulk update for multiple devices

To update the distributed tracing sampling configuration for multiple devices, use automatic device configuration. Follow this twin schema:

{
    "properties": {
        "desired": {
            "azureiot*com^dtracing^1": {
                "sampling_mode": 1,
                "sampling_rate": 100
            }
        }
    }
}

Element name	Required	Type	Description
`sampling_mode`	Yes	Integer	Two mode values are currently supported to turn sampling on and off. `1` is on, and `2` is off.
`sampling_rate`	Yes	Integer	This value is a percentage. Only values from `0` to `100` (inclusive) are permitted.

Query and visualize

To see all the traces that an IoT hub has logged, query the log store that you selected in diagnostic settings. This section shows how to query by using Log Analytics.

If you've set up Log Analytics with resource logs, query by looking for logs in the DistributedTracing category. For example, this query shows all the logged traces:

// All distributed traces 
AzureDiagnostics 
| where Category == "DistributedTracing" 
| project TimeGenerated, Category, OperationName, Level, CorrelationId, DurationMs, properties_s 
| order by TimeGenerated asc

Here are a few example logs in Log Analytics:

Time generated	Operation name	Category	Level	Correlation ID	Duration in milliseconds	Properties
2018-02-22T03:28:28.633Z	DiagnosticIoTHubD2C	DistributedTracing	Informational	00-8cd869a412459a25f5b4f31311223344-0144d2590aacd909-01		`{"deviceId":"AZ3166","messageSize":"96","callerLocalTimeUtc":"2018-02-22T03:27:28.633Z","calleeLocalTimeUtc":"2018-02-22T03:27:28.687Z"}`
2018-02-22T03:28:38.633Z	DiagnosticIoTHubIngress	DistributedTracing	Informational	00-8cd869a412459a25f5b4f31311223344-349810a9bbd28730-01	20	`{"isRoutingEnabled":"false","parentSpanId":"0144d2590aacd909"}`
2018-02-22T03:28:48.633Z	DiagnosticIoTHubEgress	DistributedTracing	Informational	00-8cd869a412459a25f5b4f31311223344-349810a9bbd28730-01	23	`{"endpointType":"EventHub","endpointName":"myEventHub", "parentSpanId":"0144d2590aacd909"}`

To understand the types of logs, see Azure IoT Hub distributed tracing logs.

Understand Azure IoT distributed tracing

Many IoT solutions, including the Azure IoT reference architecture (English only), generally follow a variant of the microservice architecture. As an IoT solution grows more complex, you end up using a dozen or more microservices. These microservices might or might not be from Azure.

Pinpointing where IoT messages are dropping or slowing down can be challenging. For example, imagine that you have an IoT solution that uses five different Azure services and 1,500 active devices. Each device sends 10 device-to-cloud messages per second, for a total of 15,000 messages per second. But you notice that your web app sees only 10,000 messages per second. How do you find the culprit?

For you to reconstruct the flow of an IoT message across services, each service should propagate a correlation ID that uniquely identifies the message. After Azure Monitor collects correlation IDs in a centralized system, you can use those IDs to see message flow. This method is called the distributed tracing pattern.

To support wider adoption for distributed tracing, Microsoft is contributing to W3C standard proposal for distributed tracing. When distributed tracing support for IoT Hub is enabled, it follows this flow:

A message is generated on the IoT device.
The IoT device decides (with help from the cloud) that this message should be assigned with a trace context.
The SDK adds a tracestate value to the message property, which contains the time stamp for message creation.
The IoT device sends the message to IoT Hub.
The message arrives at the IoT Hub gateway.
IoT Hub looks for the tracestate value in the message properties and checks whether it's in the correct format. If so, IoT Hub generates a globally unique trace-id value for the message and a span-id value for the "hop." IoT Hub records these values in the IoT Hub distributed tracing logs under the DiagnosticIoTHubD2C operation.
When the message processing is finished, IoT Hub generates another span-id value and logs it, along with the existing trace-id value, under the DiagnosticIoTHubIngress operation.
If routing is enabled for the message, IoT Hub writes it to the custom endpoint. IoT Hub logs another span-id value with the same trace-id value under the DiagnosticIoTHubEgress category.
IoT Hub repeats the preceding steps for each message that's generated.

Public preview limits and considerations

The proposal for the W3C Trace Context standard is currently a working draft.
The only development language that the client SDK currently supports is C.
Cloud-to-device twin capability isn't available for the IoT Hub basic tier. However, IoT Hub still logs to Azure Monitor if it sees a properly composed trace context header.
To ensure efficient operation, IoT Hub imposes a throttle on the rate of logging that can occur as part of distributed tracing.

Next steps

To learn more about the general distributed tracing pattern in microservices, see Microservice architecture pattern: distributed tracing.
To set up configuration to apply distributed tracing settings to a large number of devices, see Configure and monitor IoT devices at scale.
To learn more about Azure Monitor, see What is Azure Monitor?.
To learn more about using Azure Monitor with IoT Hub, see Monitor IoT Hub.