POC inspectIT - CoScale Integration: How-To

Owned by Alexander Wert
Last updated: Sept 15, 2016 by Mario Mann
5 min read

Setting up inspectIT

Download the inspectIT Server (CMR), inspectIT Agent and the inspectIT Rich Client from the following Release Site on GitHub: CoScale-Integration

Select the artifacts that fit to your environment (Linux/Windows/MacOS, x86/X64).

inspectIT Server

  1. Download the inspectIT server aka. CMR (Central Measurement Repository) with integrated CoScale plugin.
  2. Extract the archive and execute the startup.sh (on Windows: startup.bat) script to start the server. 

If started successfully the console log should show the following line at the end:

Console Log
...
2016-09-14 10:36:41,908: 16582  [           main] INFO      rocks.inspectit.server.CMR - CMR started in 16318.977642 ms

inspectIT Rich Client

  1. Download the inspectIT Rich Client with the CoScale extension.
  2. Extract the archive and execute the inspectIT file (on Windows: inspectIT.exe) to start the rich client.
  3. Connect the rich client to the CMR:
    1. Open the Repository Manager View
    2. If your CMR is running on the localhost, you already should see that the CMR is connected (green ball / checkmark):


    3. Otherwise configure a new connection to your CMR by clicking on .
    4. In the opened wizard enter the Name and IP-Address and click on Finish.
  4. Define an instrumentation Environment (this step is important for the agent to be connected!)
    1. Switch to the Configuration perspective and open the Instrumentation Manager


    2. Create an instrumentation environment for your application. Give it some name.
       
       
    3. Open the agent mapping view:
       

    4. Create a new mapping by clicking on the green plus button at the right.
    5. In the wizard enter the name and IP address of your agent and select the previously created environment.
    6. Note: These steps provide only a basic instrumentation. How to create an advanced, meaningful instrumentation (that is application specific) is described on a separate page: Configuration basics

inspectIT Agent

  1. Download the inspectIT Agent.
  2. To install the inspectIT agent follow the instructions on the corresponding section on this page: Manual JavaAgent installation.
  3. Once the application started successfully with the agent, the connected agent should appear under the CMR node in the Repository Manager View in the rich client:

Validate Installation

To check whether installation and the instrumentation configuration was successful do some interaction with your target application and check whether inspectIT shows any data that has been collected:

Configuring CoScale Extension

To configure the CoScale extension follow these steps:

  1. Select your CMR in the Repository Manager View and open the CMR settings ( "Configure Repository"):


  2. In the configuration dialog enabled "Show advanced properties" (at the bottom) and navigate to Data Publishing Extensions → CoScale


  3. Activate the CoScale plugin, enter the configuration properties and click on the OK button.

    Property NameDescription
    ActivateEnable / disable the CoScale Plugin.
    Access TokenThe access token for the CoScale API.
    Application IDThe CoScale ID of the application of interest.
    Write TimingsIf activated, the inspectIT CoScale plugin writes e-2-e latencies and calculated thresholds as metric data to CoScale.


    Base URLThe base URL to the CoScale server.
    Number of Invocations to SendThe number of slowest invocation sequences (per business transaction type) within an anomaly to be sent to CoScale as "forensic" data.
    Aggregation Time Interval (min)The time interval in minutes to take for aggregation of response times and anomaly detection.
    Minimal Anomaly DurationThe minimum duration (in the time unit defined above) of anomal behaviour to be detected as an anomaly.
    Smoothing FactorSmoothing factor for the Exponentially Weighted Moving Average used for anomaly detection
    Trend Smoothing FactorThe factor for the Trend component of the anomaly detection
    Standard Deviation FactorThe anomaly detection algorithm learns baselines on the latencies of business transactions. On top of this baseline, the algorithm adds a multiple of the standard deviation of the latency values to calculate a threshold curve that detemines when an anomaly should be detected. This property defines the factor to be multiplied with the standard deviation before adding the result to the baseline value.

  4. If the configuration was correct then inspectIT should have retrieved the Business Context configuration from CoScale. To check this navigate to the Configuration Perspective → Business Context Manager. There, a new application with the same name as configured in CoScale should have been appeared. Open this application and check whether the business transactions have been successfully retrieved.

Now inspectIT should be fully configured to detect anomalies on the target application and in case of an anomaly sends invocation sequence storages to CoScale.

Analyzing inspectIT Storages

InspectIT Storages that have been sent as forensic data to CoScale can be downloaded in the dashboard views of CoScale:

Once an inspectIT storage has been downloaded it can be imported with the inspectIT Rich Client:

  1. Open the Storage Manager View
  2. Select Local Storage View:


  3. Import Storage 
  4. Select "Import to Local machine"
     
     
  5. Click Next and then Finish
  6. Double-click on the imported storage to open the Data Explorer View
  7. Navigate to Invocation Sequences → Show All to view the recorded invocation sequences for the detected anomaly: