Using Actuator to Monitor Applications

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Ahoy mateys! Welcome aboard the ship of Spring Boot, where we sail through the world of software development. Today, we’ll be talking about Spring Boot Actuator, a tool that helps us monitor our Spring Boot applications.

Spring Boot Actuator is a collection of production-ready features that we can add to our application with minimal configuration. It provides us with insights into our application’s health, metrics, and various other details. With Actuator, we can monitor and manage our application in real-time.

Actuator helps us track our application’s performance and detect any issues that might arise. It provides us with a comprehensive set of tools for monitoring and troubleshooting our application. We can use Actuator to view application-specific details such as the environment, threads, and logs, and also to obtain metrics for various aspects of the application, such as memory usage, garbage collection, and HTTP requests.

But wait, why do we need to monitor our application, you ask? Well, when we develop an application, we want it to perform optimally and be reliable. However, sometimes things don’t go according to plan. Our application may become slow or unresponsive, and we need to identify the problem and fix it quickly. That’s where Actuator comes in. It gives us the ability to monitor our application in real-time, identify issues, and take corrective action.

In the next section, we’ll take a closer look at some of the features provided by Actuator and how we can use them to monitor our application. Get ready to hoist the mainsail, we’re about to embark on an exciting journey!

How to Use Actuator to Monitor Application Endpoints and Metrics

Now that we know what Actuator is and why it’s important, let’s explore how to use it to monitor our application.

Enabling Actuator

By default, Actuator is not enabled in our application. We need to add the Actuator dependency to our project and configure it to enable the features we need. To enable Actuator, we simply add the following dependency to our pom.xml file if we’re using Maven or build.gradle file if we’re using Gradle:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
</dependency>

Once we’ve added the dependency, Actuator is ready to use. We can access the Actuator endpoints using HTTP requests to the URL http://localhost:<port>/actuator, where <port> is the port number our application is running on.

Monitoring Endpoints

Actuator provides us with several endpoints that we can use to monitor our application. Some of the most useful endpoints are:

/actuator/health: This endpoint provides information about the application’s health, such as whether it’s running or not, and whether there are any critical issues.
/actuator/info: This endpoint provides custom information about the application, such as the application version, build details, and other details specific to the application.
/actuator/metrics: This endpoint provides information about the application’s metrics, such as memory usage, garbage collection, and HTTP requests.

We can use HTTP GET requests to access these endpoints and retrieve the relevant information. For example, to check the application’s health, we can send an HTTP GET request to http://localhost:<port>/actuator/health.

Customizing Endpoints

Actuator also provides us with the ability to customize the endpoints to meet our specific needs. We can add our own custom endpoints or modify the existing ones to provide additional information or functionality. We can do this by adding configuration properties to our application.properties or application.yml file.

For example, to add a custom endpoint to our application, we can add the following property to our application.properties file:

management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=customEndpoint

This will expose a custom endpoint at http://localhost:<port>/actuator/customEndpoint, which we can use to retrieve custom information about our application.

Securing Endpoints

When we expose Actuator endpoints, it’s important to ensure that they’re secured and only accessible by authorized users. Actuator provides us with several ways to secure the endpoints, such as basic authentication and OAuth2.

We can secure Actuator endpoints by adding the appropriate configuration properties to our application.properties or application.yml file. For example, to enable basic authentication for Actuator endpoints, we can add the following properties:

spring.security.user.name=admin
spring.security.user.password=admin
management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=*
management.endpoint.health.show-details=always
management.endpoint.info.enabled=true
management.endpoints.web.base-path=/actuator

These properties enable basic authentication and expose all Actuator endpoints to authenticated users. The management.endpoint.health.show-details property sets the level of detail for the health endpoint to “always”, which provides additional information about the application’s health. The management.endpoint.info.enabled property enables the info endpoint, which provides custom information about the application. Finally, the management.endpoints.web.base-path property sets the base path for the Actuator endpoints to /actuator.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Actuator is an essential tool for monitoring our Spring Boot applications. It providesus with the ability to monitor our application in real-time, obtain metrics, and identify issues quickly. With Actuator, we can keep our application healthy and reliable.

In this article, we explored the overview of Spring Boot Actuator, how it helps us monitor our applications, and how to use it to monitor endpoints and metrics. We also looked at how to customize and secure Actuator endpoints.

So, hoist the Jolly Roger and set sail with Spring Boot Actuator! With Actuator by our side, we can navigate the treacherous waters of software development with ease. And remember, if you run into any trouble, Actuator will always be there to help you steer your application back on course. Happy sailing!