APM Server extension

The APM Server receives data from APM agents and transforms them into Elasticsearch documents that can be visualised in Kibana.

Usage

To include APM Server in the stack, run Docker Compose from the root of the repository with an additional command line argument referencing the apm-server-compose.yml file:

$ docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f extensions/apm-server/apm-server-compose.yml up

Meanwhile, you can navigate to the APM application in Kibana and follow the setup instructions to get started.

Connecting an agent to APM Server

The most basic configuration to send traces to APM server is to specify the SERVICE_NAME and SERVICE_URL. Here is an example Python Flask configuration:

import elasticapm
from elasticapm.contrib.flask import ElasticAPM

from flask import Flask

app = Flask(__name__)
app.config['ELASTIC_APM'] = {
    # Set required service name. Allowed characters:
    # a-z, A-Z, 0-9, -, _, and space
    'SERVICE_NAME': 'PYTHON_FLASK_TEST_APP',

    # Set custom APM Server URL (default: http://localhost:8200)
    'SERVER_URL': 'http://apm-server:8200',

    'DEBUG': True,
}

Configuration settings for each supported language are available in the APM documentation: APM Agents.

Checking connectivity and importing default APM dashboards

1. On the Kibana home page, click Add APM under the Observability panel.
2. Click Check APM Server status to confirm the server is up and running.
3. Click Check agent status to verify your agent has registered properly.
4. Click Load Kibana objects to create an index pattern for APM.
5. Click Launch APM to be taken to the APM dashboard.

See also

Running APM Server on Docker