Set OpenTelemetry Trace Propagation Formats for End-to-End Tracing - ARMS

When your distributed system includes services instrumented with different tracing libraries (such as Zipkin, Jaeger, or W3C-compliant tools), trace context can break at service boundaries. Managed Service for OpenTelemetry propagates trace IDs and span IDs across services through HTTP headers using configurable formats, so you can maintain end-to-end traces across heterogeneous environments.

By default, Managed Service for OpenTelemetry uses tracecontext and baggage (the W3C standards). If your services use other formats, configure the propagator to match.

Supported formats

Format	HTTP header	Description
`tracecontext`	`traceparent: {version}-{trace-id}-{parent-id}-{trace-flags}`	W3C standard. Default format. See W3C Trace Context.
`baggage`	Defined by the W3C Baggage specification	W3C standard for propagating key-value pairs. Default format. See W3C Baggage.
`b3`	`b3: {TraceId}-{SpanId}-{SamplingState}-{ParentSpanId}`	Single-header format for Zipkin-based systems. See OpenZipkin B3.
`b3multi`	`X-B3-TraceId: {TraceId}` `X-B3-SpanId: {SpanId}` `X-B3-ParentSpanId: {ParentSpanId}` `X-B3-Sampled: {SamplingState}`	Multi-header format for Zipkin-based systems. See OpenZipkin B3.
`jaeger`	`uber-trace-id: {trace-id}:{span-id}:{parent-span-id}:{flags}`	For services instrumented with the Jaeger client. See Jaeger propagation format.
`xray`	AWS X-Ray format	For services integrated with AWS X-Ray.
`ottrace`	OpenTracing format	Legacy format for OpenTracing-instrumented services.
`none`	No headers injected or extracted	Disables context propagation entirely.

Configure the propagation format

Specify the propagation format when starting an application. Use either a Java system property or an environment variable.

Use a Java system property

Add -Dotel.propagators to the JVM startup arguments. Separate multiple formats with commas.

java -javaagent:/path/to/opentelemetry-javaagent.jar \
     -Dotel.resource.attributes=service.name=<your-service-name> \
     -Dotel.exporter.otlp.headers=Authentication=<your-token> \
     -Dotel.exporter.otlp.endpoint=<your-endpoint> \
     -Dotel.metrics.exporter=none \
     -Dotel.propagators=tracecontext,baggage,b3 \
     -jar <your-app>.jar

Placeholder	Description
`<your-service-name>`	Name that identifies the service in traces
`<your-token>`	Authentication token for the OTLP endpoint
`<your-endpoint>`	OTLP collector endpoint URL
`<your-app>`	Application JAR filename

Use an environment variable

Set the OTEL_PROPAGATORS environment variable before starting the application. Separate multiple formats with commas.

export OTEL_PROPAGATORS="b3"

Then start the application as usual.

Behavior with multiple formats

When you specify multiple formats (for example, tracecontext,baggage,b3), the propagator injects and extracts headers for all listed formats on every request.

Keep the following in mind:

Default formats: tracecontext and baggage are W3C standards supported by most modern observability platforms. Start with these unless your services require a different format.
Zipkin compatibility: Use b3 (single header) or b3multi (separate headers) for Zipkin-based tracing systems.
Jaeger compatibility: Use jaeger for services instrumented with the Jaeger client.
Disable propagation: Set the format to none to stop injecting and extracting trace context headers.