This article provides a walkthrough on how to use the unified CloudWatch Agent to send traces to AWS X-Ray, a distributed tracing service that helps analyze service relationships, measure specific user actions, and maintain SLAs.

Specifically, the article covers:

• What a trace represents and the concepts of segments and subsegments in AWS X-Ray
• The role of the CloudWatch Agent as a collector for traces, receiving data via receivers, processing it, and exporting it to AWS X-Ray
• Step-by-step instructions for creating an IAM role, installing and configuring the CloudWatch Agent on an EC2 instance, and instrumenting a Python application to generate and send OpenTelemetry traces
• Viewing and analyzing the traces in the AWS X-Ray console, including the trace map and detailed trace information
• Conclusion highlighting the benefits of distributed tracing and AWS X-Ray integration with AWS services