APM Server extension

Adds a container for Elasticsearch APM server. Forwards caught errors and traces to Elasticsearch to enable their visualisation in Kibana.

Usage

If you want to include the APM server, run Docker Compose from the root of the repository with an additional command line argument referencing the apm-server-compose.yml file:

$ docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f extensions/apm-server/apm-server-compose.yml up

Connecting an agent to APM-Server

The most basic configuration to send traces to APM server is to specify the SERVICE_NAME and SERVICE_URL. Here is an example Python FLASK configuration:

import elasticapm
from elasticapm.contrib.flask import ElasticAPM

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)
app.config['ELASTIC_APM'] = {
    # Set required service name. Allowed characters:
    # a-z, A-Z, 0-9, -, _, and space
    'SERVICE_NAME': 'PYTHON_FLASK_TEST_APP',

    # Set custom APM Server URL (default: http://localhost:8200)
    'SERVER_URL': 'http://apm-server:8200',

    'DEBUG': True,
}

More configuration settings can be found under the Configuration section for each language: https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/apm/agent/index.html

Checking connectivity and importing default APM dashboards

From the Kibana Dashboard:

1. Add APM button under Add Data to Kibana section
2. Ignore all the install instructions and press Check APM Server status button.
3. Press Check agent status
4. Press Load Kibana objects to get the default dashboards
5. Lastly press the APM dashboard to the bottom right.

See also

Running APM Server on Docker