Instrumenting an app for monitoring

Monitor and Troubleshoot Azure Solutions

Ebadur Osib

Senior Cloud Consulting Engineer

Instrumentation vs application insights

Instrumenting an app for monitoring

Instrumentation

What is app instrumentation?

 

• Adds monitoring code.
• Enabled telemetry collection:
  • request rates
  • response times
  • errors
  • dependencies
• Sends data to Azure monitor and application insights.

Auto-instrumentation

 

• Supported for common Azure services:
  • App services
  • Azure functions
• Minimal configuration.
• No manual code changes.

 

Auto-instrumentation in action

What Azure injects automatically

 

• Injects Application Insights agent into the runtime environment.
• Agent leverages runtime-level SDK hooks.
• Telemetry is emitted automatically.
• No explicit SDK references are required.

The silent failure

The silent failure

Manual instrumentation

 

• SDK added to app code.
• More control.
• Custom telemetry for:
  • events
  • business metrics
  • detailed traces

Keys and connections

• Telemetry requires a destination.
• Defined by connection string.
• Auto-instrumentations configures automatically.
• Manual instrumentation requires explicit location.
• Required for telemetry.

Environment variables

Troubleshooting

 

• Make sure application insights is enabled.
• Ensure usage of correct connection string.
• Check for supported runtime and service.
• No conflicting SDK configuration.

Summary

 

• Instrumentation makes applications observable.
• Auto-instrumentation requires no code changes.
• Enabled at platform level.
• Uses environment-based configuration.
• Provides fast and consistent visibility.
• Form the foundation for deeper monitoring

Let's practice!

Monitor and Troubleshoot Azure Solutions