An administrator agent and local worker agents are provided in nodes of a distributed system to support dynamic tracing of runtime data. Trace profiles are associated with the nodes on which the local worker agents reside. The local worker agents monitor the runtime data for an error, and the administrator agent adjusts the trace profile(s) in response to the error(s). The administrator agent sends the adjusted trace profile(s) to the local worker agents, so as to enable trace output data of traces performed by the nodes to be increased or decreased.