Trace AWS Lambda Python functions

To achieve complete observability over AWS Lambda Python functions, Lumigo's distributed tracing supports both automatic instrumentation and manual instrumentation.

Automatic Instrumentation

By using Lumigo lambda layer our auto-tracing feature automatically adds the Lumigo tracer to your functions, instrumenting your entire code base, without changing a single line of code.

Instrumenting functions via the Lumigo UI

You can easily instrument your functions via the Lumigo UI. To do so:

• Go to the Functions page
• Select the functions you want to instrument
• Click Auto-trace or the Tracing toggle

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Lumigo auto-tracing allows you to instrument your functions automatically, without touching your function source code. This can save you time, reduce your package size, and keep your tracing needs from impacting your functional code. Learn more about auto-tracing

Manual Instrumentation

The lumigo_tracer package is Lumigo's Python agent for distributed tracing and performance monitoring on AWS Lambda. It allows you to pursue automated metric gathering through Lambda Layers, automated metric gathering and instrumentation.

Add the Lumigo Tracer to your application

To begin, add the following line to your requirements.txt file:

lumigo_tracer

Next, open your Lambda function code. Import the lumigo tracer so that it may be used locally:

from lumigo_tracer import lumigo_tracer

Once you've imported the tracer, add the lumigo_tracer decorator to your Lambda function's handler.

@lumigo_tracer()
def my_lambda(event, context):
    print('I can view this line now')

Once these two steps have been completed, your code should resemble the following example:

import json
from lumigo_tracer import lumigo_tracer
...
@lumigo_tracer()
def lambda_handler(event, context):
  return {
    'statusCode': 200,
    'body': json.dumps('Hi!')
  }

Connect Your Lumigo Account

Set your Lumigo token as the LUMIGO_TRACER_TOKEN environment variable of your Lambda function; refer to the Using AWS Lambda environment variables documentation for more information. Your Lumigo token is available in Settings -> Tracing -> Manual tracing, see the Lumigo Tokens documentation.

We advise you to use the most secure available to you to store secrets such as your LUMIGO_TRACER_TOKEN; refer to AWS Lambda's Securing environment variables documentation for guidance on keeping the values of your Lambda environment variables secure.

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Using Lambda Layers?

You can find our Python Lambda Layer here.

Learn more about Lambda Layers

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Using Step Functions?

Monitor your step functions by adding the flag step_function=True to your @lumigo_tracer decorator.

Learn more about our step function support on our GitHub repository

Library support

Databases

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Do you need Lumigo to support a different package?

If Lumigo does not yet support a package you use, please contact our support.

Tracing through containers and OpenTelemetry

To be able to trace scenarios in which a Lambda function sends HTTP requests to an application instrumented with OpenTelemetry, like those using the Lumigo OpenTelemetry Distro for JS and Lumigo OpenTelemetry Distro for Python or other OpenTelemetry SDKs, the Lumigo Python tracer can optionally add W3C TraceContext HTTP headers to outgoing requests.

The support of W3C TraceContext in the Lambda Python tracer is currently opt-in via the LUMIGO_PROPAGATE_W3C=true environment variable.

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Supported tracer and layer versions

W3C TraceContext is supported by the lumigo_tracer package v1.1.206 and above. The minimum layer versions are listed here by AWS region (applicable to all supported Python runtimes).

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Why opt-in?

We have implemented support for W3C TraceContext in the Lambda Python tracer as opt-in out of an abundance of caution. In some seldom cases, like invoking some Apple APIs, the HTTP request is signed, based on the current headers it has, before our tracer can interact with it by adding the W3C TraceContext traceparent header, and that may cause issues. Note that most AWS APIs use Signature Version 4 (SigV4) to sign requests, and the Lambda Python tracer will not add the W3C TraceContext traceparent headers to them.

We may consider changing the W3C TraceContext to be opt-out later down the road, based on your feedback.