Jaeger + Prometheus + HotROD Demo Setup (Helm v2 Branch)

This guide walks you through deploying Jaeger (using the v2 Helm chart), Prometheus, and the HotROD demo app on Kubernetes.

Prerequisites

Ensure the following tools are installed and configured:

• A Kubernetes cluster (e.g., Minikube, kind, or cloud-based)
• kubectl
• Helm 3
• git

Deploy the Jaeger Demo Setup

The following components are deployed as part of the Jaeger demo setup:

• Jaeger All-in-One: Tracing backend (collector, query, UI, agent in one pod)
• HotROD Demo App: Sample microservices application for tracing demonstration
• Prometheus Monitoring Stack: Includes Prometheus, Grafana, and Alertmanager for metrics and dashboards
• Load Generator: Continuously generates traces from the HotROD app

To deploy the entire infrastructure with a single command, run:

bash ./deploy-all.sh

This script will automatically install and configure all components on your Kubernetes , To deal with individual components refer to deploy-all.sh script .

Access the Deployment

After deploying, you can access each component locally using the following port-forward commands in separate terminals:

# Jaeger UI
kubectl port-forward svc/jaeger-query 16686:16686

# Prometheus UI
kubectl port-forward svc/prometheus 9090:9090

# Grafana Dashboard
kubectl port-forward svc/prometheus-grafana 9091:80

# HotROD UI
kubectl port-forward svc/jaeger-hotrod 8080:80

Then, open the following URLs in your browser:

• Jaeger UI: http://localhost:16686/jaeger
• Prometheus: http://localhost:9090
• Grafana: http://localhost:9091
• HotROD Demo App: http://localhost:8080/hotrod

Deploying on Cloud Infrastructure (e.g., Oracle Cloud)

To expose your services externally using a custom domain (e.g., http://demo.jaegertracing.io/), you need to set up an Ingress Controller and define an Ingress resource.

Step 1: Deploy the NGINX Ingress Controller

Apply the official NGINX Ingress Controller manifest for cloud environments:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx/controller-v<VERSION>/deploy/static/provider/cloud/deploy.yaml

🔁 Replace <VERSION> with the latest version from the Ingress NGINX GitHub Releases.

Step 2: Verify the Ingress Controller

After deployment, check that the ingress controller service is up and has an external IP:

kubectl get svc -n ingress-nginx

You should see output like:

NAME                       TYPE           CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP       PORT(S)                       AGE
ingress-nginx-controller   LoadBalancer   10.96.229.38    129.146.214.219   80:30756/TCP,443:30118/TCP    1h

🧠 Note: The EXTERNAL-IP is the public IP address your domain (e.g., demo.jaegertracing.io) should point to via DNS.

Step 3: Apply the Ingress Resource

Once your DNS is mapped and the ingress controller is ready, deploy your Ingress definition:

kubectl apply -f ingress.yaml

This routes incoming HTTP traffic to the respective Kubernetes services based on the path or host rules defined in ingress.yaml.

🔧 Remarks

📌 The current configuration is set to run in the default namespace. You can use any custom namespace by making minor adjustments in:

Helm --namespace flags
Kubernetes manifests (metadata.namespace)
Prometheus scrape configs and service selectors if targeting Jaeger in a different namespace

📌 The default credentials for Grafana dashboards are:

• Username: admin
• Password: prom-operator

Once logged in, you can explore the pre-built dashboards or add your own tracing and metrics visualizations.

Configure TLS/SSL with Cert-Manager

To secure services with TLS/SSL, we use Cert-Manager. It provides the following features:

• Automatic provisioning of TLS/SSL certificates.
• Integration with Let's Encrypt for certificates.
• Automatic renewal of certificates before expiration.
• Integration with NGINX Ingress Controller.

The issuer configuration YAML is located at ./tls-cert/issuer.yaml.

For detailed setup instructions, refer to the official Cert-Manager documentation: Cert-Manager ACME Tutorial with NGINX Ingress