lab04.md

Exercise 4

Learnings

1. Basics about Application Insights
2. Connecting to Application Insights using instrumentation key
3. Analyze Application Insights data in the Azure Portal and Visual Studio

Create Application Insights

1. Open Azure Portal and sign in.

2. Add Application Insights named PracticalDevOps-Dev to the resource group PracticalDevOps-Dev.
   

3. Copy Instrumentation Key from Azure Portal
   

Configure Application to Use Application Insights

1. Add the InstrumentationKey setting to your web.config file.

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
    ...
    <configuration>
        <appSettings>
            <add key="MinimumNumberOfBooks" value="1"/>
            <add key="MaximumNumberOfBooks" value="5"/>
            <add key="BookNameTokenUrl" value="..."/>
            <add key="InstrumentationKey" value="ba2c0764-5cfb-4741-a8e1-fb150b175a7d"/>
        </appSettings>
        ...
    </configuration>
   

2. Add the Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Web NuGet package to the Books project

3. Add code setting the instrumentation key to Startup.cs:

    public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)
    {
        TelemetryConfiguration.Active.InstrumentationKey = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["InstrumentationKey"];
   
        // Allow CORS
        app.UseCors(CorsOptions.AllowAll);
        ...
    }
   

4. Add custom event tracking to Controllers/BooksController.cs:

    [HttpGet]
    [Route("books")]
    public async Task<IEnumerable<Book>> Get()
    {
        var numberOfBooks = new Random().Next(this.options.MinimumNumberOfBooks, this.options.MaximumNumberOfBooks + 1);
   
        var telemetryClient = new TelemetryClient();
        telemetryClient.TrackEvent($"Generating {numberOfBooks} books");
   
        var result = new Book[numberOfBooks];
        ...
    }
   

   [HttpPost]
   [Route("books")]
   public IHttpActionResult Post(Book newBook)
   {
       var telemetryClient = new TelemetryClient();
       telemetryClient.TrackEvent($"Trying to add a book");
   
       // For demo purposes, return an HTTP 500 error (used to demonstrate logging)
       return this.InternalServerError();
   }
   

5. Copy Request tracking middleware implementation from Assets/Exercise-4-Telemetry that logs information about all requests to Application Insights.

6. Configure OWIN to use the request tracking middleware by updating Configuration method in Startup.cs:

    public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)
    {
        TelemetryConfiguration.Active.InstrumentationKey = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["InstrumentationKey"];
   
        app.UseApplicationInsights();
   
        // Allow CORS
        app.UseCors(CorsOptions.AllowAll);
        ...
    }
   

Run Application and View Telemetry

1. Run all your tests to make sure you did not break something.

2. Run application locally and refresh http://localhost:2690/api/books multiple times.

3. Open Search in Application Insights.
   

4. See if your application telemetry appears.

5. Open Application Insights Search in Visual Studio while debugging your application. Refresh http://localhost:2690/api/books multiple times. See if your application telemetry appears.
   

Further Ideas

If you have time left, you could additionally cover topics like:

• Describe how to link Application Insights with wide-spread logging frameworks like NLog (Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.NLogTarget NuGet package)
• Demonstrate PowerBI and Application Insights
• Show Application Insights Analytics