I'm trying to find any documentation/advisory info on whether or not to use the same App Insights instance from multiple regions. I'm assuming that if I have an API App Service in useast, it's not recommended to use an App Insights instance from West region as it would add latency.
I just got the feedback from MS application insights team, the answer is no performance issue:
Application insights sends data to their backend asynchronously - so
the actual network RT time should not matter.
Also, even though the
app insights is in West Region, the 'ingest' endpoints are globally
distributed, and telemetry is always sent to the nearest available
'ingest' point.
Details are here.
For the official document, I'm asking for it(but not sure if they would have one).
Hope it helps.
Related
I am new to GCP and come from an Azure background. Is there an equivalent of "Azure Application Insights" on the GCP side for Monitoring Applications?
Let me explain my use case more clearly with an example: If I have a .NET based web application running on a Windows VM on GCP can Google Cloud Monitoring help detect Exceptions raised by the running application and send out alerts.
Any pointers/links to further explore this type of monitoring capability would be helpful.
Cloud Monitoring will provide you with many statisctics - most probably with what you need. And if there aren't any metrics to suit you need you may create ones based on the logs collected from the VM.
By default there is a number of logs being ingested but if you want to have full range and experiment with various ones you may want to install a monitoring agent. Go through the documentation and have a look.
You can then use the metrics to create charts and have a live view on a number of things such as cpu utilisation, disk IO/s, dropped/sent/received packets etc. Here's the Cloud Monitoring documentation.
And finally - you can create alerts based on the metrics (set thresholds, time periods etc). They can be simple e-mail alerts for example but they can be sent via pub-sub and trigger some functions or apps too.
Since you're new to GCP it's a lot of reading ahead of you but you will easily find documentation for most of GCP's services.
If you provide more details I can update my answer and give you more precise answer.
We have a Azure based system which is growing in complexity, and we need to monitor chains of events and ensure they arrive where we expect them to arrive.
We have a on-prem Java application, which sends events to an IoT Hub. The IoT hub routes to service bus queues. We have functions that update a cosmos database, trigger other functions or route to additional queues. Some functions are also callable through an API Management instance.
Our functions are already connected to Application Insights, and here the Application Insights instance is named the same as the Function App (IIRC this naming was suggested through the form that created the AI resource)
The application map in Application Insights make me lean toward one AI per environment, to have a complete map of the system. Log Analytics also seems logical to use one per environment to be able to potentially correlate data if needed.
What is the correct path for Log Analytics and Application Insights, respectively?
If it is not as clear-cut as stated in my title, what factors do I need to consider when I start to use these services?
The correct number of instances is the one that works best for you, whether that exactly follows recommended practices or not.
The recommendation is to use one workspace per environment and make sure the cloud_RoleName in App Insights to distinguish parts of the system. Log Analytics has similar considerations.
Functions defaults to spinning up an App Insights instance along with the app because if you don't use App Insights you loose most of the logging ability- it's important to connect it to App Insights, but overriding the default behavior and connecting to a centralized workspace is common in larger systems.
There are certainly reasons you might want to split the workspaces, and you can union data across workspaces as needed to pull data together from both Log Analytics and App Insights instances.
Data access control or geographic locations. If you need to keep a portion of the data within certain geographic boundaries or limit access to certain people, then split that portion off.
Similar to the security concern is a billing one. If for whatever reason, billing for different portions of the application needs to be split, then you would also want to split the logging portion.
Different portions of the system rarely interact, or are maintained by different teams, and organizing the data into separate workspaces will provide more benefits over the hassle of cross-
You are going to surpass the limitations on a single resource. Very few applications actually hit these limits, but they are there.
Is there any easy way to find out which applications are using a particular application insights from azure portal?
I have checked the various options in the portals but don't find any easy to understand interface where I can find the list of applications which are sending data to that particular application insights.
The application map should provide you with a good view of various resources using the app insights resource
The application map is good. You can also go to Performance, then choose Roles. Roles is in the same tab group as Operations and Dependencies. This will give you a listing of all services that use that Application Insights instance. This has the added benefit of allowing you to expand a particular node and see the actual instances.
This same approach also works for the Failures tab. You can see the number of calls and failures rolled up per service, and also see the breakout metrics per instance.
I have the following resources
One Mobile/API app
One MVC app
Three Logic apps
One Azure function deployment with 5 functions
I want to have a single tracking number (correlation ID) to track across all instances at the same time. I'm looking at the Contoso Insurance sample, but I'm rebuilding it by hand (not using Azure Deploy scripts).
I've read the deployment code, but I'm not sure if I can merge app insight logs together, or if it's a hack of some sort.
Observations
When I right click on visual studio, I can only associate to Application insights instances that aren't already connected to a *app (web | mobile | api).
However, in the configuration, I can give Application insights a direct GUID which might allow me to achieve the goal of one App Insights activity log for the entire process
Question
Is it possible to have one app insights log among all Mobile/API/Logic/MVC sites?
Is there a way to have (or should I have) one standard app insights instance per web app, then a special dedicated shared app insights instance for my code to call into and log?
What is contoso insurance doing with Azure App Insights?
Jeff from Logic Apps team here -- So the answer is yes - but there are some caveats. We are working to make the experience seamless and automatic, but for now it will require the following. First as a heads up:
First, for Logic Apps we have what's called the client tracking ID -- this is a header you can set on an incoming HTTP Request or Service Bus message to track and correlate events across actions. It will be sent to all steps (functions, connectors, etc.) with the x-ms-client-tracking-id header.
Logic Apps emits all logs to Azure Monitor - which unfortunately today only has a sink into Event Hubs, Storage, and Log Analytics -- not App Insights.
With all of that in-mind, here's the architecture we see many following:
Have your web apps just emit to App Insights directly. Use some correlation ID as needed. When firing any Logic Apps, pass in the x-ms-client-tracking-id header so you can correlate events.
Log your events to App Insights in the Function app. This blog details some of how to do that, and it is also being worked on for a better experience soon.
In your logic app - either write a Function to consume events off of Azure monitor and push to App Insights, or write a function that is an App Insight "logger" that you can call in your workflow to also get the data into App Insights.
This is how Contoso Insurance is leveraging App Insights as far as I understand. We are working across all teams (App Insights, Azure Monitor, Azure Functions, Logic Apps) to make this super-simple and integrated in the coming weeks/months, but for now achievable with above. Feel free to reach out for any ?s
Is there any way to get Azure status update only for some services and regions I am using? For example, I am using Cloud Services in West US. When this service in West US is down, I want to get an alert for it. I don't care about other services and other regions.
If you set up alert notifications for your application, you'll get notified when any of the underlying services you're using are not functioning properly. An alert will ensure that your service is available and working.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/insights-receive-alert-notifications/
If you get an alert about a service issue, that's when I would first take a look at the Azure status dashboard, and then take a look at your application logs to troubleshoot.
Another trick is to create simple URL's in your application that do a quick service test. For example, let's say you're using blob storage in the west datacenter. You could set up a page that does a test write/read to ensure that service is working. This will give you a 100% accurate indication if there is a problem. Since the cloud is highly distributed, and services statuses don't update immediately, I find this method highly preferable.
You would then point your alert monitoring at URL's like this:
http://yourapp.com/
http://yourapp.com/blobtest
http://yourapp.com/redistest
The Azure Status website has the information your need for all Azure regions.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/status/