Deploy Jaeger all-in-one through the Linode Marketplace

Jaeger is a CNCF distributed tracing system designed for monitoring and troubleshooting microservices-based distributed systems. It helps developers understand the architecture of complex systems through data-driven dependency diagrams, analyze request timelines, identify performance bottlenecks, and diagnose issues across service boundaries. Jaeger supports OpenTelemetry for instrumentation and provides a comprehensive platform for distributed trace collection, storage, and visualization.

Deploying a Marketplace App

The Linode Marketplace lets you easily deploy software on a Compute Instance using Cloud Manager. See Get Started with Marketplace Apps for complete steps.

1. Log in to Cloud Manager and select the Marketplace link from the left navigation menu. This displays the Linode Create page with the Marketplace tab pre-selected.

2. Under the Select App section, select the app you would like to deploy.

3. Complete the form by following the steps and advice within the Creating a Compute Instance guide. Depending on the Marketplace App you selected, there may be additional configuration options available. See the Configuration Options section below for compatible distributions, recommended plans, and any additional configuration options available for this Marketplace App.

4. Click the Create Linode button. Once the Compute Instance has been provisioned and has fully powered on, wait for the software installation to complete. If the instance is powered off or restarted before this time, the software installation will likely fail.

To verify that the app has been fully installed, see Get Started with Marketplace Apps > Verify Installation. Once installed, follow the instructions within the Getting Started After Deployment section to access the application and start using it.

Configuration Options

• Supported distributions: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
• Recommended plan: All plan types and sizes can be used. For production workloads handling high trace volumes, consider at least 4GB Shared Compute or higher for optimal performance.

Jaeger Options

• Administrator Username (required): Enter the username for accessing the Jaeger web interface. The default is jaegeradmin.
• Administrator Email Address (required): Enter the email address for the Jaeger administrator account.

Limited Sudo User

You need to fill out the following fields to automatically create a limited sudo user, with a strong generated password for your new Compute Instance. This account will be assigned to the sudo group, which provides elevated permissions when running commands with the sudo prefix.

• Limited sudo user: Enter your preferred username for the limited user. No Capital Letters, Spaces, or Special Characters.

  Locating The Generated Sudo Password

  A password is generated for the limited user and stored in a .credentials file in their home directory, along with application specific passwords. This can be viewed by running: cat /home/$USERNAME/.credentials

  For best results, add an account SSH key for the Cloud Manager user that is deploying the instance, and select that user as an authorized_user in the API or by selecting that option in Cloud Manager. Their SSH pubkey will be assigned to both root and the limited user.

• Disable root access over SSH: To block the root user from logging in over SSH, select Yes. You can still switch to the root user once logged in, and you can also log in as root through Lish.

  Accessing The Instance Without SSH

  If you disable root access for your deployment and do not provide a valid Account SSH Key assigned to the authorized_user, you will need to login as the root user via the Lish console and run cat /home/$USERNAME/.credentials to view the generated password for the limited user.

Custom Domain (Optional)

If you wish to automatically configure a custom domain, you first need to configure your domain to use Linode’s name servers. This is typically accomplished directly through your registrar. See Use Linode’s Name Servers with Your Domain. Once that is finished, you can fill out the following fields for the Marketplace App:

• Linode API Token: If you wish to use the Linode’s DNS Manager to manage DNS records for your custom domain, create a Linode API Personal Access Token on your account with Read/Write access to Domains. If this is provided along with the subdomain and domain fields (outlined below), the installation attempts to create DNS records via the Linode API. See Get an API Access Token. If you do not provide this field, you need to manually configure your DNS records through your DNS provider and point them to the IP address of the new instance.
• Subdomain: The subdomain you wish to use, such as www for www.example.com.
• Domain: The domain name you wish to use, such as example.com.

Getting Started after Deployment

Accessing the Jaeger Web Interface

1. Open your web browser and navigate to https://DOMAIN, where DOMAIN is the custom domain you entered during deployment or your Compute Instance’s rDNS domain (such as 192-0-2-1.ip.linodeusercontent.com). You can also use your IPv4 address, but this connection is not encrypted. To learn more about viewing IP addresses and rDNS, see the Managing IP Addresses.

2. Use the following credentials to log in:

   • Username: Enter the administrator username you configured during deployment. The default is jaegeradmin.
   • Password: Enter the password stored in the credentials file on your server. To obtain it, log in to your Compute Instance via SSH or Lish and run:

     cat /home/$USER/.credentials

Configuring Applications for Tracing

To send traces to your Jaeger instance, configure your applications to use OpenTelemetry with the following endpoints:

OTLP gRPC Endpoint (Recommended)

• Endpoint: https://DOMAIN:4317
• Protocol: OTLP/gRPC with mTLS
• Client Certificate Required: Yes

OTLP HTTP Endpoint

• Endpoint: https://DOMAIN:4318
• Protocol: OTLP/HTTP with mTLS
• Client Certificate Required: Yes

Configure your application to use:

• Client Certificate: client-app-name-cert.pem
• Client Key: client-app-name-key.pem
• CA Certificate: ca-cert.pem

Badger Persistent Storage

Your Jaeger deployment uses Badger as the persistent storage backend, ensuring trace data survives container restarts:

• Storage Location: /var/lib/jaeger/badger on the host system.
• Container Mount: /badger inside the Jaeger container.

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

• Jaeger Official Documentation