Skip to content

Application insights

  • Application Performance management for web developers
  • Helps detecting anomalies in the application
  • Must be created in the same region of the VM to monitor

  • The actual metrics data is stored in a separate resource called Log Analytics Workspace

  • Monitoring

  • Request rates

  • Response times
  • Failure rates

  • User and session counts

  • Understand how users use the app

  • Users & Session: see currently logged users

  • Funnels: see how users are progressing through the stages of the page. E.g, from index.html (top step) onto details.html (second step)
  • User Flows: visualize how users navigate between pages (what is clicked, if user navigates away, repeated actions)
  • Retention: if users return to the app
  • Impact: if a module (a page) of the app is impacting the experience of the user

Instrumentation package

  • Application insights works installing a instrumentation package within the application to be monitored

  • Ways of installing the instrumentation package

  • Embedded into the code itself

    • The Connection string of the Application insights must be inserted into the code or the resource to be monitored
    • Connection string can be found in Properties tab in Application Insights resource
  • Added on top of the resource containing the application (VM or WebApp)
    • It's enable under the Monitoring tab on webapp creation
    • Afterwards, under Application Insights tab it must be enabled

Live Metrics

  • Show info about all resources monitored by Application Insights with live metrics
  • If you want to see errors that can occur in Azure Functions locally
  • You can use Live metrics stream to see the requests and any exceptions which occur

Application Map

  • Draws a map of the different components of the system
  • Similar to Kiali

Availability

  • Constantly perform availability tests on the application
  • URL ping test every 5 min from different locations
  • Checks also the response time with clients from multiple locations (Multi-step web)

Usage and estimated costs

  • Under Configure/Usage and estimated costs
  • Under Data retention you can decide for how long you want to retain the data collected by Application Insights
  • If you have massive amounts of data being generated , it might slow down your application. In such cases, you can send data samples instead onto Application Insights
  • You can also set a Daily cap on what is the maximum amount of data that can be collected by Application Insights on a daily basis
  • With daily cap you can prevent high costs with monitoring

Application Insights Sdk

  • Telemetry data available locally
public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
  services.AddControllersWithViews();
  services.AddApplicationInsightsTelemetry(); // Telemetry SDK
  services.AddSingleton<ITelemetryInitializer, MyTelemetry>();
}

public class MyTelemetry : ITelemetryInitializer
{
  private IHttpContextAccessor _context;
  public MyTelemetry(IHttpContextAccessor httpContextAccessor)
  {
    _context = httpContextAccessor ?? throw new ArgumentNullException("httpContextAccessor");
  }
  public void Initialize(ITelemetry telemetry)
  {
    var current = _context.HttpContext;
    if (current != null)
    {
      if (current.Request.Headers.ContainsKey("UserId"))
      {
        telemetry.Context.User.Id = current.Request.Headers["UserId"].ToString();
        telemetry.Context.Session.Id = telemetry.Context.User.Id;
        telemetry.Context.User.AuthenticatedUserId = telemetry.Context.User.Id;
      }
      else
        telemetry.Context.User.Id = "1";
    }
  }
}

SQL Dependency

  • Tracks the SQL commands that the application issued
  • Must be enabled under Application Insights tab in the web app resource