Azure App Insights Essentials for Developers and Teams

Azure App Insights is a powerful tool that helps developers and teams monitor and optimize their cloud-based applications. It provides a comprehensive view of your app's performance, usage, and issues.

With Azure App Insights, you can collect telemetry data from your app, including user interactions, errors, and performance metrics. This data is then visualized in a user-friendly dashboard, making it easy to identify trends and areas for improvement.

To get started with Azure App Insights, you'll need to install the SDK in your app, which is a straightforward process that can be completed in just a few minutes. The SDK collects data from your app and sends it to the Azure App Insights service for analysis.

By leveraging Azure App Insights, developers and teams can quickly identify and resolve issues, improve app performance, and make data-driven decisions to drive business growth.

To get started with Azure App Insights, you'll need to have a resource configured to monitor an application in Azure Application Insights. This is a crucial step before you can begin monitoring events.

First, you'll need to create a resource in Azure Application Insights. If you're unsure about how to do this, refer to the Microsoft documentation for guidance.

Next, you'll need to supply Incident Management with identifying information for the Azure resource you want to monitor. This will allow you to use the Incident Management anomaly engines to automatically detect application anomalies.

Here are the key steps to get started:

Note that the integration does not currently support Azure tags, so keep this in mind when setting up your resources.

Instrumentation is a crucial step in getting the most out of Azure App Insights. You can instrument your application using Azure diagnostics, which can be imported to Log Analytics.

To get started, we recommend using the Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro, which simplifies the process and provides a robust solution.

Custom events and metrics allow you to track business-specific data, such as user sign-ups, purchases, or feature usage, and track numerical data relevant to your business, like revenue or conversion rates.

Here are some key metrics to track:

Automatic instrumentation is a game-changer for developers, allowing you to monitor and troubleshoot your application without making any code changes. Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro is a recommended solution for instrumentation.

You can also use Azure diagnostics and import data to Log Analytics, but the OpenTelemetry Distro is a more streamlined option. Log Analytics and Logstash are other tools that can be used for instrumentation, but they require more setup and configuration.

The Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro is a no-code solution that automatically instruments your application, making it easy to monitor performance and usage. It provides a comprehensive set of metrics and insights into your application's health and usage.

In Application Insights, a logic model diagram helps visualize the components and how they interact. The logic model diagram is a key tool for understanding the Application Insights system.

Application Insights is made up of various components, and the logic model diagram shows how they work together. This diagram is a valuable resource for anyone looking to get a grip on how Application Insights operates.

The logic model diagram is a visual representation of the Application Insights system, making it easier to understand the relationships between its components. By breaking down the system into its individual parts, the logic model diagram provides a clear and concise overview of how everything fits together.

Understanding the logic model diagram is essential for anyone looking to instrument their application effectively. It helps identify the key components and how they interact, allowing for more informed decisions about application performance and user experience.

If your Azure web app is hosted in a datacenter with an Application Insights collection endpoint, there's no charge for data transfer.

The distribution of collection endpoints matters, not where your Application Insights resource is hosted.

You can incur more network costs, which vary depending on the region the telemetry is coming from and where it's going.

Azure bandwidth pricing details can help you understand the costs involved.

Here are the two main scenarios to keep in mind:

Application Insights supports TLS 1.2 and 1.3 as the encryption mechanisms of choice.

TLS 1.0 and 1.1 will be retired for Application Insights on 1 March 2025.

In alignment with the Azure wide legacy TLS retirement, Application Insights will no longer support these older protocol versions.

As a result, you should prepare your Application Insights setup to use TLS 1.2 and 1.3 by the specified retirement date.

This change will ensure best-in-class encryption for your Application Insights data.

Data Collection is a crucial aspect of Azure App Insights. Most Application Insights data has a latency of under 5 minutes, but some data can take longer, especially for larger log files.

Application Insights collects telemetry about your app, including web server telemetry, web page telemetry, and performance counters. This data can be used to monitor your app's performance, health, and usage. You can select the location when you create a new Application Insights resource.

The types of telemetry collected by Application Insights include HTTP requests, dependencies, exceptions, and performance counters. Custom events and metrics can also be coded and collected. Uncaught exceptions, user information, device information, and session information are also tracked.

Here are some examples of telemetry collected by Application Insights:

Data Analysis is a crucial step in understanding your application's performance and user behavior. You can integrate Log Analytics with Power BI to gain deeper insights into your data.

With the right tools, you can filter by UserSession/Events to identify specific patterns and trends. For example, you can analyze data to see when users are abandoning their games, as shown in the Azure App Insights scenario walk through.

By drilling down into specific events, you can gain a better understanding of user behavior and make data-driven decisions. This can help you improve user engagement and satisfaction.

Client-side Telemetry provides valuable insights into user interactions with your application. Key metrics include Page Views, Load Times, and User Interactions.

Here are some specific metrics you can track with Client-side Telemetry:

Monitoring these metrics can help you ensure a smooth user experience and identify performance issues. By understanding user behavior, you can make targeted improvements to your application.

Application Insights doesn't handle sensitive data by default, so you shouldn't put sensitive data in URLs as plain text.

To ensure your custom code doesn't collect personal or other sensitive details, check the sent data in your IDE and browser's debugging output windows during development and testing.

You can archive information for more details on data collection, retention, and storage in Application Insights.

Application Insights collects telemetry data, including HTTP requests, dependencies, exceptions, performance counters, custom events, and metrics that you code.

It also collects uncaught exceptions in your app, user information, device information, and session information.

To configure data collection and sampling options, access the Configuration Settings in the Azure Portal, navigate to your Application Insights resource, and go to the “Configure” section.

You can adjust sampling settings to control the volume of data sent to Application Insights, which helps reduce data storage costs and avoid noise from unimportant telemetry.

Most Application Insights data has a latency of under 5 minutes, but some data can take longer, especially for larger log files.

Here's a summary of the types of telemetry data Application Insights collects:

Telemetry is a crucial aspect of Azure App Insights, providing valuable insights into your application's performance and user behavior. It collects data on various aspects of your app, including HTTP requests, dependencies, exceptions, and performance counters.

HTTP requests are one of the key metrics collected by telemetry. This includes calls to SQL databases, HTTP calls to external services, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Table Storage, Azure Blob Storage, and Azure Queue Storage.

Telemetry also collects data on uncaught exceptions in your app, including information on user and device details.

Most Application Insights data has a latency of under 5 minutes, although some data can take longer, especially for larger log files.

Server-side telemetry focuses on the performance and reliability of your application's backend services. Key metrics include Response Times, Failure Rates, and Dependencies.

Here are some key metrics collected by telemetry:

Client-side telemetry provides insights into how users interact with your application. Key metrics include Page Views, Load Times, and User Interactions.

Understanding these metrics will help you identify performance issues, improve user engagement, and optimize your application's performance.

Monitoring is a crucial aspect of Azure App Insights. You can monitor a wide range of aspects of your application and trigger various actions with alerts. Alerts can notify you of anomalies or performance issues before they impact users.

With metrics, you can dive deep into data to understand usage patterns and trends. Diagnostic settings allow you to configure streaming export of platform logs and metrics to the destination of your choice. Logs can be retrieved, consolidated, and analyzed into Azure Monitoring Logs.

Some key metrics to focus on include CPU Usage, Memory Usage, and Disk I/O. These metrics provide insights into the health and performance of your application's infrastructure. Here's a breakdown of what each metric tracks:

Workbooks allow you to create interactive reports and dashboards that visualize application monitoring data. This can help you quickly identify trends and issues with your application.

Monitoring is a crucial aspect of any application, and Azure Application Insights offers a robust solution to help you keep track of your application's performance and user behavior.

You can monitor a wide range of aspects of your application and trigger various actions with alerts. This feature allows you to stay on top of any issues that may arise.

Metrics are another key area of focus in Azure Application Insights, enabling you to dive deep into usage patterns and trends. This data can be incredibly valuable in understanding how your application is being used.

With diagnostic settings, you can configure streaming export of platform logs and metrics to the destination of your choice. This provides you with even more flexibility in how you monitor your application.

Logs are an essential component of monitoring, and Azure Application Insights allows you to retrieve, consolidate, and analyze all data collected into Azure Monitoring Logs. This feature makes it easy to identify and troubleshoot issues.

Workbooks are a powerful tool in Azure Application Insights, enabling you to create interactive reports and dashboards that visualize application monitoring data. This feature makes it easy to present complex data in a clear and concise manner.

Here are some compelling reasons to use Azure Application Insights for monitoring:

Application Insights provides a comprehensive set of metrics to help you understand how your application is performing and how users are interacting with it.

You can track response times, failure rates, and dependencies as they happen with real-time performance monitoring.

Proactive alerts can be set up to notify you of anomalies or performance issues before they impact users.

Custom events and metrics allow you to track business-specific data that is not covered by standard telemetry.

Here are some key metrics to focus on: