Using the unified CloudWatch Agent to send traces to AWS X-Ray
AWS Cloud Operations Blog
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
The AWS News Feed is currently looking for gold sponsors. If you want to support the AWS community and reach a large audience of AWS professionals, consider sponsoring the AWS News Feed.
Related articles
Apr 21
2025
2025
Streamlining trace sampling behavior for AWS Lambda functions with AWS X-Ray
Aug 25
2024
2024
.NET Observability with OpenTelemetry – Part 3: Distributed Tracing using AWS X-Ray
Jun 15
2026
2026
Amazon CloudWatch introduces Log Analytics for unified log analysis
Nov 11
2024
2024
Get x-ray vision into AWS CloudFormation deployments with a timeline view
The AWS News Feed is currently looking for silver sponsors. If you want to support the AWS community and reach a large audience of AWS professionals, consider sponsoring the AWS News Feed.