kibana/x-pack/plugins/fleet/dev_docs/tracing.md

Using APM for server traces

Kibana ships with the Elastic APM Node.js Agent built-in for debugging purposes. We don't currently merge this to release builds, but it can be very helpful to diagnose or confirm the flow & timing of a request traveling through multiple services.

To use it in Fleet,

1. Import the shared apm instance as needed (HTTP handler, service layer, etc) import { apm } from '../path/to/ingest_manager/server'
2. add apm.startTransaction and/or apm.startSpan
   • TODO: More details around rules / conventions for tracing
   • One example from reporting plugin: a537f9af50/x-pack/plugins/reporting/server/export_types/png/execute_job/index.ts (L30-L31)
   • an example for startTransaction

     Transaction docs

     

   • an example for startSpan

     Span docs

     

3. start Kibana with APM enabled (as described in Instrumenting with Elastic APM)
   • via env variable or config/apm.dev.js

     ELASTIC_APM_ACTIVE=true yarn start

     or module.exports = { active: true, };

   • By default traces are sent to a remote server, but you can send to a local APM by setting the serverUrl value in config/apm.dev.js
   • TODO: document default server & credentials
4. Run the code where you added the annotations e.g. make an HTTP request
5. Go to /app/apm#/traces and see your trace search filter by host, transaction result, etc
   example screenshot