I have a working example of OpenTelemetry with java auto instrumentation and I am using the Zipkin for viewing the traces.
My question is basically simple but I am not getting a clear answer yet. I want to configure samplers and filters for processing and dropping some traces but I am not running any separate Otel collector agent yet as part of inital setup. The traces are exported to Zipkin as of todayand I can view it on Zipkin UI.
Can I use the collector configuration with Zipkin and if yes, do I "need" to separately run a "collector" instance and then pass the traces to Zipkin ?
The answer is Yes. I had to run a collector instance and then use the Zipkin exporter to send the traces to Zipkin backend.I was able to use the various processors and the otel-configuration to tune my traces as per my requirement.
I have blogged about the approach in this blog for more clarity- https://nitin-rohidas.medium.com/introduction-to-opentelemetry-distributed-tracing-part-iii-9b1bce59c1bd