Deploying without jaeger-agent

[yurishkuro]

Since we're planning to deprecate jaeger-agent, there was a question on the ticket (jaegertracing/jaeger#4739 (comment)) whether the operator supports a deployment without the agent. I looked through the docs on the website but it wasn't clear if it can be disabled altogether.

[iblancasa]

I think @frzifus was thinking on checking that.

[konpal-sharma]

it's technically possible depending on your use case and requirements. For instance, if you already have tracing instrumentation in your applications that can send traces directly to the Jaeger backend without the need for an agent, you might choose not to deploy the Jaeger Collector component.

In such a scenario, you would configure your applications to send traces directly to the Jaeger backend service, typically through the Jaeger client libraries or SDKs. This setup bypasses the need for the agent to collect and forward traces.

To accomplish this, you would configure your Jaeger backend service to accept traces directly from your applications. The exact configuration steps may vary depending on your deployment environment and the Jaeger backend you're using (such as Jaeger's own backend or a compatible backend like Zipkin, Elasticsearch, etc.).

I think while it's possible to deploy Jaeger without the agent component, whether the Jaeger Operator specifically supports this configuration may depend on the version and specific features of the Operator.