VictoriaTraces - Single-Instance Distributed Tracing Database

This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for cloudimg support services.

## Replace Your Multi-Node Tracing Cluster With a Single Instance VictoriaTraces is an OpenTelemetry compatible distributed tracing database from the VictoriaMetrics family. It accepts spans over standard OTLP HTTP and serves them back through Jaeger compatible query APIs plus a built-in browser UI - all from a single static Go binary with no external storage dependency. No Cassandra, no Elasticsearch, and no object store to operate: span storage, indexing, and query all live in one process on one instance. This AMI delivers VictoriaTraces fully installed as a systemd service, fronted by an authenticating nginx reverse proxy, with span storage on a dedicated EBS volume. ## Who This Is For - Platform and SRE teams who want span storage inside their own VPC rather than a third-party SaaS, without running a Jaeger plus Elasticsearch cluster to do it

• Application teams instrumenting with the OpenTelemetry SDKs who need an OTLP endpoint to point at on day one
• Observability owners replacing a multi-node tracing backend with a single-instance appliance VictoriaMetrics is one of the fastest-growing open-source monitoring ecosystems, and VictoriaTraces extends that same philosophy of operational simplicity to distributed tracing. ## Application Stack - VictoriaTraces - single static Go binary, run by a dedicated non-login system account
• nginx reverse proxy on port 80, the only public listener, enforcing HTTP Basic Auth
• OTLP HTTP span ingestion at /insert/opentelemetry/v1/traces (protobuf or JSON)
• Jaeger compatible query APIs under /select/jaeger/api/ and the built-in span explorer UI at /select/vmui/
• Span storage on a dedicated 32 GiB EBS volume, independently resizable and separate from the OS disk ## Secure By Default VictoriaTraces ships with no authentication of its own. An open ingest endpoint lets anyone poison the trace store, and an open query endpoint leaks every span - including hostnames, URLs, user identifiers, and internal topology. This image therefore never gives the database a public listener. - VictoriaTraces binds to loopback 127.0.0.1 only and is reachable solely through nginx
• Both the ingest path and the query paths sit behind the same HTTP Basic Auth gate
• A unique 24-character password is generated on first boot, bcrypt hashed into the nginx credential file, and written to a root-only file
• The image ships with an empty credential file - no usable password exists in it and every login against the unbooted image is rejected
• The only unauthenticated route is a static health endpoint that never touches the database ## Getting Started 1. Launch the AMI, opening port 80 in your security group alongside SSH

2. SSH in and read the generated password: sudo cat /root/victoriatraces-credentials.txt

3. Open http:///select/vmui/ and sign in as admin to explore stored traces

4. Point an OpenTelemetry Collector or instrumented application at http:///insert/opentelemetry/v1/traces using the same credentials

5. Query traces programmatically through the Jaeger compatible APIs under /select/jaeger/api/

6. Verify the appliance end to end: sudo /usr/local/sbin/victoriatraces-selftest.sh ## Retention and Sizing Span retention defaults to 7 days. Storage is capped at 80 percent of the data volume so a span burst cannot fill the disk and wedge the service. Both are single-flag settings. Trace volume is far higher than log volume, so size the volume against your span rate, not your log rate. Need help sizing? Email support@cloudimg.co.uk with your estimated spans per second and retention requirement. Our engineers will reply within one business day with a recommended instance type, EBS volume size, and retention configuration tailored to your workload. ## Project Maturity VictoriaTraces is a newer component of the VictoriaMetrics family, first released in July 2025 and under active development. It is pre-general-availability by the project's own statement: upstream has not yet committed to backward compatibility for the on-disk data format, so a future major upgrade may require re-ingesting spans rather than an in-place upgrade. The software is Apache 2.0 licensed and installed unmodified from the official upstream release. ## 24/7 cloudimg Support Every deployment is backed by cloudimg engineers available around the clock via email. Support covers initial deployment and instance sizing, OpenTelemetry Collector and SDK configuration, retention and disk tuning, TLS termination with Let's Encrypt or custom certificates, nginx and authentication configuration, version upgrades, and troubleshooting ingestion, query, and connectivity issues. VictoriaTraces and VictoriaMetrics are trademarks of their respective owners. cloudimg is not affiliated with or endorsed by VictoriaMetrics.