104-opentelemetry-zipkin-nodejs-app

104-opentelemetry-zipkin-nodejs-app

The Aternity OpenTelemetry Collector is part of the Aternity DEM platform and can collect OTLP, the OpenTelemetry native telemetry protocols, as well as Jaeger and Zipkin telemetry.

In this cookbook, Aternity collects the telemetry of a nodejs webapp that is instrumented using OpenTelemetry and exporting Zipkin telemetry. The Aternity OpenTelemetry Collector container is deployed next to the web app. It collects every trace - no sampling.

Prerequisites

1. an Aternity APM account (SaaS)
2. a Docker host, for example Docker Desktop

Step by Step

1. Get your CustomerID & SaaS Analysis Server Host details from the Aternity APM webconsole

Navigate to Aternity APM (for example https://apm.myaccount.aternity.com) > Agents > Install Agents:

1. Find your CustomerID, for example 12341234-12341234-13241234
2. Grab SaaS Analysis Server Host, for example agents.apm.myaccount.aternity.com

Those information are required to activate the Aternity OpenTelemetry Collector container, passing via the environment variable SERVER_URL.

2. Start the containers

Download a local copy of the docker-compose.yaml file, for example in the directory Tech-Community/104-opentelemetry-zipkin-nodejs-app

Start the containers using the docker-compose.yaml, for example with Bash:

cd Tech-Community/104-opentelemetry-zipkin-nodejs-app

# Configure the environment variables for the Aternity OpenTelemetry Collector
export ATERNITY_SAAS_SERVER_HOST="agents.apm.myaccount.aternity.com"
export ATERNITY_CUSTOMER_ID="12341234-12341234-13241234"

docker-compose up

or with PowerShell:

cd Tech-Community/104-opentelemetry-zipkin-nodejs-app

# Configure the environement variable for the Aternity OpenTelemetry Collector
$env:ATERNITY_SAAS_SERVER_HOST="agents.apm.myaccount.aternity.com"
$env:ATERNITY_CUSTOMER_ID="12341234-12341234-13241234"

docker-compose up

3. Use the app to generate some telemetry

The application should now be running. Every trace is collected by the Aternity APM OpenTelemetry Collector.

Navigate to http://localhost:8104/fetch from a browser or call the url from a command line.

For example using curl:

curl http://localhost:8104/fetch

4. Open the Aternity APM webconsole to visualize and analyze the traces collected for every transaction

Search transaction, browse the spans for the selected transaction :

Notes

Stop the app and all the containers

Press CTRL + C in the shell where it is running.

Or in a shell, go to the folder where you keep the docker-compose.yaml and run:

docker-compose down

More details

The cookbook contains few files:

• app.js is a simple web app that listens http request (using Express) and exposes a /fetch method.
• trace_app_with_opentelemetry.js is a nodejs bootstrap to run the web app and enable the OpenTelemetry instrumentation
• Dockerfile defines the docker image to build
• docker-compose.yaml is the main file that defines the multi-containers app with two services: the instrumented nodejs web app and the Aternity OpenTelemetry Collector

In the docker-compose.yaml, on the Aternity OpenTelemetry Collector section, the image is set to be downloaded from DockerHub and the port to receive Zipkin telemetry is open.

The only thing that needs to be configured is the SERVER_URL variable. It contains the Aternity CustomerID and SaaS Analysis Server Host that allow the container to connect to the Aternity SaaS service and get activated. The Aternity OpenTelemetry Collector section is simple:

services:

  opentelemetry-collector:
    
    image: registry.hub.docker.com/aternity/apm-collector:2022.3.0-3
    
    container_name: aternity-opentelemetry-collector       
    
    environment:

      SERVER_URL: "wss://${ATERNITY_SAAS_SERVER_HOST}/?RPM_AGENT_CUSTOMER_ID=${ATERNITY_CUSTOMER_ID}"

    ports:
      - "9411:9411/tcp"

In the docker-compose.yaml above, the SERVER_URL has been defined by two docker compose variables, to ease external configuration (ATERNITY_SAAS_SERVER_HOST and ATERNITY_CUSTOMER_ID). It can also be hard-coded, like this this:

      SERVER_URL: "wss://agents.apm.myaccount.aternity.com/?RPM_AGENT_CUSTOMER_ID=12341234-12341234-13241234"

On the application container side, the OTEL_EXPORTER_ZIPKIN_ENDPOINT environment variable is used to bind the web app telemetry exporter to the collector container:

  service104_js:   
    
    environment:  
    
      OTEL_EXPORTER_ZIPKIN_ENDPOINT: http://aternity-opentelemetry-collector:9411/api/v2/spans
      OTEL_SERVICE_NAME: service104_js

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Aternity. The contents provided here are licensed under the terms and conditions of the MIT License accompanying the software ("License"). The scripts are distributed "AS IS" as set forth in the License. The script also include certain third party code. All such third party code is also distributed "AS IS" and is licensed by the respective copyright holders under the applicable terms and conditions (including, without limitation, warranty and liability disclaimers) identified in the license notices accompanying the software.