Get Started

Get Started with Lightstep

Get started with Lightstep by learning about how Lightstep works, how to get your application's telemetry data into Lightstep, and how to view that data to perform root cause analysis.

Improve Your Incident Response Flow

Learn how to improve your incident response capabilities using high-cardinality attributes in your instrumentation, creating alerts, and configuring Workflow Links.

Create Lightstep Users

Lightstep offers role-based access control (RBAC) to features and functionality. You can add users manually or automatically via domain whitelisting, allowing any user at the domain access without an explicit invitation.

Create Projects for Your Environments

You can have several projects in Lightstep. For example, you might have one project for your development environment and one for production. Or you may have projects for different areas of your application while they're in development.

Get Started with Lightstep

It's easy to get started with Lightstep. Sign up for an account, add OpenTelemetry instrumentation to your service, and see data flow into Lightstep.

Get Support From Customer Success

Contact Customer Success at Lightstep.

How Lightstep Works

Learn how tracers, Satellites, the Hypothesis Engine, and the web UI work to analyze 100 percent of unsampled transaction data from distributed, deep systems to produce complete end-to-end traces and robust metrics that explain performance behaviors and accelerate root cause analysis.

Install and Configure Satellites

Lightstep Satellites are straightforward to deploy using a Docker image, AWS/AMI, or a Debian package.

Instrument with Istio as Your Service Mesh

Lightstep works with many service meshes, and Lightstep + Istio is an easy way to get quick visibility into service performance and availability from the perspective of the service mesh.

Learn About Satellites

Lightstep uses *Satellites* to collect 100% of the performance data that your tracing instrumentation generates. Satellites collect spans generated by instrumented clients and servers, and then process and temporarily store that data during trace assembly.

Lightstep Integrations

Lightstep integrates with leading cloud-native technologies, service meshes for microservices, and enterprise data visualization and collaboration tools. These turnkey integrations make it easy to deploy Lightstep across large-scale production systems so users get the unrivaled performance insights it provides when they need it and as part of their standard, established workflows.

Manage Your Developer Satellite

When you are in Developer Mode, your Satellite runs on your machine, allowing you to collect and see only data that you create locally. You can start, stop, and configure your Satellite.

Observe Mobile Device Behavior

Learn how Lightstep handles mobile devices

Python Manual Instrumentation with OpenTracing

Configure your tracer to communicate with the Lightstep Satellites and create a single span on your Python service. You install both the OpenTracing API and Lightstep tracer and then use the OpenTracing and Lightstep APIs to instrument your code.

Quick Start for Java, Node.js, Python, and Go

Learn how to instrument your application using OpenTelemetry and then send data to Lightstep.

Quick Start for Java, Node.js, Python, and Go

Learn how to instrument your application using OpenTelemetry and then send data to Lightstep.

Quick Start: Instrumentation

Learn how to instrument your app for distributed tracing using OpenTracing and Lightstep.

Troubleshoot Developer Mode

Troubleshoot your Developer Mode Satellite in Lightstep.

Typical Workflows Using Lightstep

Learn how to use Lightstep for many of your daily activities

Understand Distributed Tracing

Distributed tracing provides a view of the life of a request as it travels across multiple hosts and services communicating over various protocols. With distributed tracing implemented, you have a window into performance at every step in the request.

Use Developer Mode

Developer Mode allows you to run a Satellite locally to view traces generated from your instrumented code as you write it. Reliable feedback helps build confidence that your code is correct, by quickly verifying your instrumentation using a console-like output.

Use Zipkin with Lightstep

If you're currently using Zipkin for tracing, you can configure it to send that data directly to Lightstep Satellites with little change. This is a great way to reuse your existing instrumentation architecture either directly in production or to quickly try out Lightstep for the first time.

Lightstep Product Overview – See what you can do with Lightstep!

Lightstep's Service Diagrams – How to Quickly Investigate Critical Issues and Service Dependencies

Workflow Links – An Easier Way to Manage Distributed Systems