Microsoft’s Application Insights is a potent tool to monitor applications’ performance in real-time. Its extensive capabilities include detecting anomalies, visualizing application dependency, and analyzing metrics related to usage. This tool is an essential part of the AZ-400 ‘Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions’ exam, as it demonstrates ways to analyze and automate operations in the DevOps lifecycle.
In this post, we will delve deeply into how we can leverage Application Insights to analyze usage metrics, a concept that plays a pivotal role in understanding application performance, usage trends, and discovering potential pain points.
Application Insights provide a wide range of usage metrics. Some of the commonly utilized metrics include the number of users, sessions, and page views. These metrics provide a broader view of the application’s performance and how end-users interact with it.
var client = new TelemetryClient();
var metrics = new MetricTelemetry(“Test metric”, 5);
client.TrackMetric(metrics);
This example code creates a new metric ‘Test metric’ with the value 5 and sends it to Application Insights.
User Metrics
In the ‘Users’ tab, Application Insights offers metrics like the active users count, new user count, and an overview of the users’ geographical locations. You can also track the authenticated and anonymous users separately. Such metrics are essential as they provide insights into the user base, its growth rate, and geographical distribution.
Session Metrics
Sessions refer to the interactions users have with the application within a specific time frame. The ‘Sessions’ tab under Application Insights provides metrics like session count, session duration, and session details. These nuances about user sessions can provide valuable insights to drive engaging user experiences.
Page View Metrics
Page View metrics, tracked in the ‘Page views’ tab, provide insights into the pages visited by the users, their entries, and exits from them. This metric is key to identify the most visited pages or pages that create abandonment.
Comparing these metrics over time helps in identifying usage trends. For example, if the session length has reduced over time, we might want to investigate the cause. It could be application performance issues or decrease in the quality of content leading to higher bounce rates.
Custom Events
Application Insights also allows you to create and track custom events. These are specific activities that you deem important for your application.
var client = new TelemetryClient();
client.TrackEvent(“Custom event”);
This example code tracks a new custom event named ‘Custom event.’
Custom events can be used for special user actions like button clicks or pages that do not automatically track like Single Page Applications.
Along with tracking these metrics, Application Insights provides capabilities to set alerts on specific metrics, create custom dashboards, and export data for additional analysis.
Conclusion
In the AZ-400 exam, understanding how to analyze usage metrics using Application Insights is imperative. The ability to comprehend such metrics can provide a wealth of information about an application’s usage, helping stakeholders make informed decisions about future development and improvements. The power of Application Insights lies in its ability to present complex metrics in an easy-to-understand format, making it indispensable in the DevOps cycle.
Practice Test
True or False: Application Insights is a feature of Microsoft Azure that provides developers with real-time analytics and telemetry of their applications.
Answer: True.
Explanation: Application Insights provides developers with real-time analytics and telemetry for their applications running on a range of platforms including .NET, Node.js and J2EE.
Which of the following can you monitor with Application Insights?
- a) Request rates, response times, and failure rates
- b) Dependency rates, exceptions, and page views
- c) Server and browser exceptions and performance counters
- d) All of the above
Answer: d) All of the above.
Explanation: With Application Insights, you are not just limited to monitoring request rates and response times. You can monitor a host of additional metrics, including all of the given options.
True or False: Application Insights can be used to monitor applications that are hosted on-premises and in Azure.
Answer: True.
Explanation: Application Insights is not limited to Azure-hosted applications. It can monitor applications that are hosted on any platform.
Which of the following is NOT a feature of Application Insights?
- a) Performance monitoring
- b) Debugging assistance
- c) Marketing analytics
- d) Availability testing
Answer: c) Marketing analytics.
Explanation: While Application Insights provides robust telemetry and performance insights, it does not provide marketing analytics.
True or False: Application Insights supports multi-dimensional analysis.
Answer: True.
Explanation: Application Insights gives you multi-dimensional analysis, allowing you to explore relationships between different metrics and dimensions.
What is the purpose of Availability tests in Application Insights?
- a) To check the functionality of the application
- b) To verify whether users can reach your application
- c) To verify if updates have caused errors in the application
- d) All of the above
Answer: b) To verify whether users can reach your application.
Explanation: Application Insights Availability tests are pings to your application to check its availability from different regions around the world.
True or False: Application Insights does not offer APIs for custom event tracking.
Answer: False.
Explanation: Application Insights provides APIs for sending telemetry from your application. This allows you to track your own custom application events.
What instrument can be used to collect custom measurements or events in Application Insights?
- a) Custom Dimensions
- b) User Flows
- c) Dependencies
- d) Funnel Analysis
Answer: a) Custom Dimensions.
Explanation: Custom Dimensions in Application Insights can be used to collect and analyze custom measurements or events.
True or false: Application Insights has a feature called User Flows that helps to understand user navigation patterns through your site.
Answer: True.
Explanation: User Flows is a visualization tool in Application Insights that helps you understand the users’ path through your application.
What is the primary language used to query data in Application Insights Analytics?
- a) SQL
- b) Kusto Query Language
- c) Python
- d) JavaScript
Answer: b) Kusto Query Language.
Explanation: Kusto Query Language (KQL) is the main querying language used in Application Insights Analytics to retrieve and manipulate telemetry data.
Interview Questions
What is Application Insights in the context of Azure DevOps?
Application Insights is a feature of Azure Monitor and is an extensible Application Performance Management (APM) service for developers and DevOps professionals. It can be used to monitor live applications, diagnose performance bottlenecks, and understand how users interact with your applications.
How is Application Insights integrated into Azure DevOps?
Application Insights can be integrated into Azure DevOps by including the Application Insights SDK into your application. Once the SDK is included in your app, it will start collecting data and sending it to the Application Insights service.
What types of data can be captured using Application Insights?
Application Insights can capture a range of data including request rates, response times, failure rates, dependency rates, exceptions, performance counters, log traces, and custom events and metrics.
Can Application Insights be used with on-premises servers?
Yes, Application Insights can work with on-premises servers. Although it is a cloud-based service, it can be used with any web application hosted on your own servers or third-party hosting services.
Which platforms support Application Insights?
Application Insights supports a wide range of platforms including .NET, Node.js, Java and Python. It also works with a variety of web servers, including IIS and Azure.
How can I track custom events with Application Insights?
Custom events can be tracked with Application Insights by using the TrackEvent method provided by the Application Insights API. These events can then be analyzed in the Azure portal.
How do I analyze the performance of my application using Application Insights?
Performance of your application can be analyzed using the metrics explorer in Application Insights. This tool can provide detailed insights into your application’s performance, such as server response times, server requests, failed requests, and dependency rates.
Can Application Insights be used for monitoring applications in real-time?
Yes, Application Insights supports live metrics that enable real-time monitoring of your application. You can view real-time telemetry of your application directly from the Azure portal.
What types of alerts can be configured using Application Insights?
In Application Insights, you can configure metric alerts and log alerts. Metric alerts are based on numerical values, while log alerts are based on the results of log searches that return records.
Can I export data from Application Insights for further analysis?
Yes, data from Application Insights can be exported to other services like Azure Storage, Azure Event Hubs, or Power BI for further analysis. This can be configured through the ‘Continuous Export’ option.
How do we set up Application Insights for a .NET Core application?
For a .NET Core application, you can set up Application Insights by installing the relevant NuGet package and configuring settings in the application’s Startup.cs file.
What kind of information does the Application Map in Application Insights provide?
The Application Map in Application Insights reveals the components of your distributed application and shows you how they interact with each other. It can show you which components are slow or failing and lets you inspect these components for more information.
What is the role of Telemetry in Application Insights?
Telemetry in Application Insights involves the collection of data about the performance and usage of your apps. This data can include standard telemetry (like page views, exceptions), custom events, and metrics that you define.
Can the behavior of specific users be tracked using Application Insights?
Yes. Application Insights supports user behavior analytics. It uses cookies to track users across sessions and can provide insights into how users interact with your application.
Can Application Insights help to diagnose exceptions in my application?
Yes, Application Insights provides a detailed exception report, along with the stack trace and related telemetry, which can help diagnose issues in the application.
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