Patent ID: 11880294
Assignee: VMWARE LLC
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. A method of tracing execution of a workflow that employs services running in a first management appliance and a second management appliance to determine whether or not the workflow executed with an error and which piece of the workflow executed with the error, said method comprising:
generating a parent span that encapsulates first states that represent the workflow, wherein one of the first states is a span context that includes a trace identifier and a span identifier;
storing the span context of the parent span in a first data store provisioned for the first management appliance;
replicating the span context of the parent span in a second data store provisioned for the second management appliance;
generating a plurality of first child spans, each encapsulating second states that represent a piece of the workflow executed by one of the services running in the first management appliance and containing a reference to the span context of the parent span that is retrieved from the first data store, wherein the second states include an error tag that indicates whether or not the piece of the workflow executed with an error; and
generating a plurality of second child spans, each encapsulating third states that represent a piece of the workflow executed by one of the services running in the second management appliance and containing a reference to the span context of the parent span that is retrieved from the second data store, wherein the third states include an error tag that indicates whether or not the piece of the workflow executed with an error.