107-opentelemetry-autoinstrumentation-nodejs-app

107-opentelemetry-autoinstrumentation-nodejs-app

In this cookbok, the OpenTelemetry automatic instrumentation is added to a simple nodejs webapp (based on Express). And APM collects the OTLP telemetry with the APM OpenTelemetry Collector container.

This cookbook differs from the cookbook 104, where instrumentation is manual and exports Zipkin telemetry.

Prerequisites

1. an APM account (SaaS)
2. a Docker host, for example Docker Desktop

Step by Step

Step 1. Get your CustomerID & SaaS Analysis Server Host details from the APM web console

Navigate to APM (for example https://apm.myaccount.aternity.com) > Agents > Install Agents:

1. Find your CustomerID, for example 12341234-12341234-13241234
2. Grab SaaS Analysis Server Host, for example agents.apm.myaccount.aternity.com

Those information are required to activate the APM OpenTelemetry Collector container, passing via the environment variable SERVER_URL.

Step 2. Start the containers

Download a local copy of the docker-compose.yaml file, for example in the directory Tech-Community/107-opentelemetry-autoinstrumentation-nodejs-app

Start the containers using the docker-compose.yaml, for example with Bash:

cd Riverbed-Community-Toolkit/APM/107-opentelemetry-autoinstrumentation-nodejs-app

# Configure the environment variables for the APM OpenTelemetry Collector
export RIVERBED_APM_SAAS_SERVER_HOST="agents.apm.myaccount.aternity.com"
export RIVERBED_APM_CUSTOMER_ID="12341234-12341234-13241234"

docker-compose up

or with PowerShell:

cd Riverbed-Community-Toolkit/APM/107-opentelemetry-autoinstrumentation-nodejs-app

# Configure the environement variable for the APM OpenTelemetry Collector
$env:RIVERBED_APM_SAAS_SERVER_HOST="agents.apm.myaccount.aternity.com"
$env:RIVERBED_APM_CUSTOMER_ID="12341234-12341234-13241234"

docker-compose up

Step 3. Use the app to generate some telemetry

The application should now be running. Every trace is collected by the APM OpenTelemetry Collector.

Navigate to http://localhost:8107/fetch from a browser or call the url from a command line.

For example using curl:

curl http://localhost:8107/fetch

Step 4. Open the APM web console to visualize and analyze the traces collected for every transaction

Search transaction, browse the spans for the selected transaction :

Notes

Stop the app and all the containers

Press CTRL + C in the shell where it is running.

Or in a shell, go to the folder where you keep the docker-compose.yaml and run:

docker-compose down

More details

The cookbook contains few files:

• app.js is a simple web app that listens http request (using Express) and exposes a /fetch method.
• trace_app_with_opentelemetry.js is a nodejs bootstrap to run the web app and enable the OpenTelemetry instrumentation
• Dockerfile defines the docker image to build
• docker-compose.yaml is the main file that defines the multi-containers app with two services: the instrumented nodejs web app and the APM OpenTelemetry Collector

In the docker-compose.yaml, on the APM OpenTelemetry Collector section, the image is set to be downloaded from DockerHub and the port to receive Zipkin telemetry is open.

The only thing that needs to be configured is the SERVER_URL variable. It contains the Aternity CustomerID and SaaS Analysis Server Host that allow the container to connect to the Aternity SaaS service and get activated. The APM OpenTelemetry Collector section is simple:

services:

  opentelemetry-collector:
    
    image: registry.hub.docker.com/aternity/apm-collector:2022.4.0-4
    
    container_name: riverbed-apm-opentelemetry-collector       
    
    environment:

      SERVER_URL: "wss://${RIVERBED_APM_SAAS_SERVER_HOST}/?RPM_AGENT_CUSTOMER_ID=${RIVERBED_APM_CUSTOMER_ID}"

    ports:
      - "4317:4317/tcp"

In the docker-compose.yaml above, the SERVER_URL has been defined by two docker compose variables, to ease external configuration (RIVERBED_APM_SAAS_SERVER_HOST and RIVERBED_APM_CUSTOMER_ID). It can also be hard-coded, like this this:

      SERVER_URL: "wss://agents.apm.myaccount.aternity.com/?RPM_AGENT_CUSTOMER_ID=12341234-12341234-13241234"

On the application container side, the OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT environment variable is used to bind the web app telemetry exporter to the collector container:

  service107_js:   
    
    environment:  
    
      OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT: http://riverbed-apm-opentelemetry-collector:4317
      OTEL_SERVICE_NAME: service107_js

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Riverbed Technology, Inc.

The contents provided here are licensed under the terms and conditions of the MIT License accompanying the software ("License"). The scripts are distributed "AS IS" as set forth in the License. The script also include certain third party code. All such third party code is also distributed "AS IS" and is licensed by the respective copyright holders under the applicable terms and conditions (including, without limitation, warranty and liability disclaimers) identified in the license notices accompanying the software.