Presented virtually at NDC Oslo 2020 While continuous integration and continuous delivery are key practices of a successful devops culture, monitoring applications to gain critical insight into what needs to be built and delivered is equally important. Without good data about a system's applications, making decisions regarding where to invest resources is largely either left to the loudest voices in the room or a random game of chance. Application Performance Management (APM) solutions are automated application monitoring tools that gather, aggregate, and present application telemetry to provide this data - an increasingly important part of application design and deployment. In this talk we will explore the APM capabilities of Azure Application Insights. We will see how it integrates to collect several different kinds of data from an application's components, reviewing some practical hints and best practices based on real-world experience. From there, we will examine the included tools that can be used to troubleshoot misbehaving applications, as well as to gain deep insights into other aspects of the application's behavior. We'll also explore ways that the telemetry data can be surfaced to provide early warnings and alerts, at-a-glance dashboards, and data integration with other tools. Finally, we'll look at the rich extensibility and customization options that Azure Application Insights offers and see how they can be used to tailor the tool to your specific application telemetry needs.

1. Consulting/Training
Don’t Fly Blind –
Implementing Effective Application
Instrumentation with Azure Application Insights

2. Consulting/Training
 VP – Cloud Development & Instructor at
About Me
John Garland
@dotnetgator
Microsoft Azure MVP, MCT,
Developer Associate,
Security Engineer Associate
On-Demand Training
World-class, subscription-based online training
Instructor-Led Training
Microsoft’s #1 training vendor for over 15 years, having
trained more than 50,000 Microsoft developers
Consulting
Custom software application development and architecture

3. Consulting/Training
Industry Influencers
We wrote the book (over 30 of them)

4. Consulting/Training
The DevOps Lifecycle
1. Plan &
Track
2. Develop &
Test
3. Release
4. Monitor &
Learn
?
CD CI

5. Consulting/Training
You cannot just depend on your customers
or your employees to accurately describe
what happened, what didn’t happen, what
went wrong, and what went right.
The (Slightly Cynical) Reality

6. Consulting/Training
 People with bad experiences
 Sometimes they scream about small problems…
 Sometimes they whisper about big problems…
 Sometimes they just leave…
 “I was trying to do something and now it’s busted”
 People with good experiences
 They don’t report things; the app was SUPPOSED to work.
 Employees have personalities, friends, and comp plans.
But Why???

7. Consulting/Training
Use telemetry to help describe what the
users did, what they didn't do, what went
wrong, and what went right.
So What Should I Do?

8. Consulting/Training
Monitoring and Telemetry in Azure
Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/overview

9. Consulting/Training
What Is Azure Application Insights?
Ingest
• Runtime instrumentation
of deployed applications
• Build-time application
extension libraries
• SDKs for custom
telemetry gathering
Explore
• Interactive Application
Map
• Live Telemetry viewer
• Performance & Metrics
explorers
• Deep data search tooling
• Analytics studio
• Visual Studio integration
Display
• Azure Portal dashboards
• Configure alerts (manual
or smart)
• Integration with Log
Analytics, Power BI
• Export data
Application Insights is an Application Performance Management service, featuring:

10. Consulting/Training
https://appinsightsdemo.shinysideup.org

11. Service Support
App Service
.NET, .NET Core (2.0+), Node.js (Preview)
Enabled from the service configuration
VM & On-Premises Hosted
Web Apps
.NET Framework IIS-Hosted applications
(Requires installing the Application Insights Agent)
AKS & Standalone
Java Applications
Requires installing the Standalone Java Agent (Preview)
Cloud Services Diagnostic data can be routed to Application Insights
Ingest – Codeless/Runtime Monitoring

12. Platform Support
.NET, .NET Core SDK
Java SDK
JavaScript SDK
Python OpenCensus Extensions
Android, iOS (*) AppCenter Continuous Export
Ingest – Code-Based SDK Integration

13. Consulting/Training
https://appinsightsdemo.shinysideup.org

14. Consulting/Training
Base price Free
Included Data* 5GB per billing account per month
Additional Data* $2.30 per GB
APM & Analytics Features Included
Data Retention 30 -730 days (90 days default)
Data Retention > 90 Days $0.10 per GB per month
Continuous Export Free
Ping Web Tests Unlimited/Free
Multi-step Web Tests $10 per test per month
Pricing
* Server-side controls for data volume management include charts for daily use,
sampling settings, and daily data cap settings (up to 1000GB per day).

15.  Enable Application Insights runtime monitoring (codeless) in services that
support it
 This helps to enable self-serve troubleshooting
 Add Application Insights SDK integration (code-based) to your applications
 Omit the Instrumentation Key in local config
 Keep the project file ApplicationInsightsResourceId to light up CodeLens
 Consider enabling SQL Command tracking
 Was on by default until version 2.14 of the .NET Core Application Insights SDK
 Enable Snapshot Debugging
 For ASP.NET Core applications add the NuGet package and configuration call
 DeveloperMode – only when developing 😁
 Add JavaScript instrumentation to capture client-side behaviors
 Set ILogger configuration
Guidance Recap

16.  Currently in Preview
 Direct Application Insights Telemetry to a
common Log Analytics workspace (without a
separate export)
 Multiple applications and services can target their
telemetry to the same workspace
 Eliminates cross-workspace queries
Workspace-Backed Application Insights Resources

17. Consulting/Training
Questions?

18. Consulting/Training