Jaeger is a distributed tracing system. It is used for monitoring and troubleshooting microservices-based distributed systems.

Overview of Jaeger

Trademarks: This software listing is packaged by Bitnami. The respective trademarks mentioned in the offering are owned by the respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.

TL;DR

helm install my-release oci://REGISTRY_NAME/REPOSITORY_NAME/jaeger

Note: You need to substitute the placeholders REGISTRY_NAME and REPOSITORY_NAME with a reference to your Helm chart registry and repository.

Introduction

This chart bootstraps a jaeger deployment on a Kubernetes cluster using the Helm package manager.

Bitnami charts can be used with Kubeapps for deployment and management of Helm Charts in clusters.

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes 1.23+
• Helm 3.8.0+
• PV provisioner support in the underlying infrastructure
• ReadWriteMany volumes for deployment scaling

Installing the Chart

To install the chart with the release name my-release:

helm install my-release oci://REGISTRY_NAME/REPOSITORY_NAME/jaeger

Note: You need to substitute the placeholders REGISTRY_NAME and REPOSITORY_NAME with a reference to your Helm chart registry and repository. For example, in the case of Bitnami, you need to use REGISTRY_NAME=registry-1.docker.io and REPOSITORY_NAME=bitnamicharts.

These commands deploy jaeger on the Kubernetes cluster in the default configuration. The Parameters section lists the parameters that can be configured during installation.

Tip: List all releases using helm list

Uninstalling the Chart

To uninstall/delete the my-release statefulset:

helm delete my-release

The command removes all the Kubernetes components associated with the chart and deletes the release. Use the option --purge to delete all history too.

Configuration and installation details

Resource requests and limits

Bitnami charts allow setting resource requests and limits for all containers inside the chart deployment. These are inside the resources value (check parameter table). Setting requests is essential for production workloads and these should be adapted to your specific use case.

To make this process easier, the chart contains the resourcesPreset values, which automatically sets the resources section according to different presets. Check these presets in the bitnami/common chart. However, in production workloads using resourcesPreset is discouraged as it may not fully adapt to your specific needs. Find more information on container resource management in the official Kubernetes documentation.

Rolling VS Immutable tags

It is strongly recommended to use immutable tags in a production environment. This ensures your deployment does not change automatically if the same tag is updated with a different image.

Bitnami will release a new chart updating its containers if a new version of the main container, significant changes, or critical vulnerabilities exist.

External database support

You may want to have Jaeger connect to an external database rather than installing one inside your cluster. Typical reasons for this are to use a managed database service, or to share a common database server for all your applications. To achieve this, the chart allows you to specify credentials for an external database with the externalDatabase parameter. You should also disable the Cassandra installation with the cassandra.enabled option. Here is an example:

cassandra.enabled=false
externalDatabase.host=myexternalhost
externalDatabase.port=9042

Additional environment variables

In case you want to add extra environment variables (useful for advanced operations like custom init scripts), you can use the extraEnvVars property inside each of the subsections: collector, query.

collector:
  extraEnvVars:
    - name: ENV_VAR_NAME
      value: ENV_VAR_VALUE

query:
  extraEnvVars:
    - name: ENV_VAR_NAME
      value: ENV_VAR_VALUE

Alternatively, you can use a ConfigMap or a Secret with the environment variables. To do so, use the extraEnvVarsCM or the extraEnvVarsSecret values.

Sidecars

If additional containers are needed in the same pod as jaeger (such as additional metrics or logging exporters), they can be defined using the sidecars parameter inside each of the subsections: collector, query .

sidecars:
- name: your-image-name
  image: your-image
  imagePullPolicy: Always
  ports:
  - name: portname
    containerPort: 1234

If these sidecars export extra ports, extra port definitions can be added using the service.extraPorts parameter (where available), as shown in the example below:

service:
  extraPorts:
  - name: extraPort
    port: 11311
    targetPort: 11311

NOTE: This Helm chart already includes sidecar containers for the Prometheus exporters (where applicable). These can be activated by adding the --enable-metrics=true parameter at deployment time. The sidecars parameter should therefore only be used for any extra sidecar containers.

If additional init containers are needed in the same pod, they can be defined using the initContainers parameter. Here is an example:

initContainers:
  - name: your-image-name
    image: your-image
    imagePullPolicy: Always
    ports:
      - name: portname
        containerPort: 1234

Learn more about sidecar containers and init containers.

Pod affinity

This chart allows you to set your custom affinity using the affinity parameter. Find more information about Pod affinity in the kubernetes documentation.

As an alternative, use one of the preset configurations for pod affinity, pod anti-affinity, and node affinity available at the bitnami/common chart. To do so, set the podAffinityPreset, podAntiAffinityPreset, or nodeAffinityPreset parameters inside each of the subsections: distributor, compactor, ingester, querier, queryFrontend and vulture.

Backup and restore

To back up and restore Helm chart deployments on Kubernetes, you need to back up the persistent volumes from the source deployment and attach them to a new deployment using Velero, a Kubernetes backup/restore tool. Find the instructions for using Velero in this guide.

Persistence

The Bitnami jaeger image stores the trace onto an external database. Persistent Volume Claims are used to keep the data across deployments.

Parameters

Global parameters

Common parameters

Jaeger parameters

Query deployment parameters

Collector deployment parameters

Set the image to use for the migration job

Cassandra storage sub-chart

Tip: You can use the default values.yaml

Troubleshooting

Find more information about how to deal with common errors related to Bitnami’s Helm charts in this troubleshooting guide.

Upgrading

To 5.1.0

This version introduces image verification for security purposes. To disable it, set global.security.allowInsecureImages to true. More details at GitHub issue.

To 4.0.0

This major updates Jaeger to version 1.63.0, which fully deprecates the jaeger-agent component. When upgrading, all the jaeger-agent components will be fully removed. Check the upstream documentation for alternatives.

To 3.0.0

This major updates the Cassandra subchart to its newest major, 12.0.0. Here you can find more information about the changes introduced in that version.

To 2.0.0

This major bump changes the following security defaults:

• runAsGroup is changed from 0 to 1001
• readOnlyRootFilesystem is set to true
• resourcesPreset is changed from none to the minimum size working in our test suites (NOTE: resourcesPreset is not meant for production usage, but resources adapted to your use case).
• global.compatibility.openshift.adaptSecurityContext is changed from disabled to auto.

This could potentially break any customization or init scripts used in your deployment. If this is the case, change the default values to the previous ones.

To 1.0.0

This major updates the Cassandra subchart to its newest major, 10.0.0. Here you can find more information about the changes introduced in that version.

License

Copyright © 2025 Broadcom. The term “Broadcom” refers to Broadcom Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.