Java APM

This page describes StackState version 4.2.

The StackState 4.2 version range is End of Life (EOL) and no longer supported. We encourage customers still running the 4.2 version range to upgrade to a more recent release.

Go to the documentation for the latest StackState release.

Overview

The Java APM Integration of the Agent V2 StackPack provides tracing support for Java JVM based systems. With this Agent you will get:

• All services which can be discovered by our Agent as components

• All relations between the different services

• Latency, Throughput and Error metric streams on all relations between service components

• Heap usage, etc. for all services

This integration will be a part of the Agent V2 StackPack which should be installed as the first step; the rest of the installation instructions will follow soon.

The traces collected by the java trace client are forwarded to the StackState Trace Agent, which in turn forwards it to StackState. This also means that port 7077 should be opened for communication from the StackState Trace Agent.

Automatic Instrumentation

Automatic instrumentation for Java uses the java-agent instrumentation capabilities provided by the JVM. When the java-agent is registered, it has the ability to modify class files at the load time. The java-agent uses the Byte Buddy framework to find the classes defined for instrumentation and modify those class bytes accordingly.

Instrumentation may come from an auto-instrumentation, the OpenTracing api, or a mixture of both. Instrumentation generally captures the following info:

• Timing duration is captured using the JVM's nanotime clock unless a timestamp is provided from the OpenTracing api

• Key/value tag pairs

• Errors and stacktraces which are unhandled by the application

• A total count of traces (requests) flowing through the system

Traces Installation

To enable tracing and sending it to StackState Trace Agent, you need to follow the below steps to get started.

Download the java trace client and follow the steps below for the different environments.

Traces Installation - VM

• Set the following JVM arguments when running your java application

  • -Dsts.service.name={{service-name}}

  • -Dsts.agent.host={{host-of-the-stackstate-agent}}

  • -Dsts.agent.port=8126 {the default port for the trace agent api}

  • -javaagent:{path/of/downloaded-jar.jar}

• Once above steps are done,the java trace client will start sending collected traces to the StackState Trace Agent which will then be forwarded to StackState.

Traces Installation - Docker

• Set the following JVM arguments in your environment variables when running your container

  • -Dsts.service.name={{service-name}}

  • -Dsts.agent.host={{host-of-the-stackstate-agent}}

  • -Dsts.agent.port=8126 {the default port for the trace agent api}

  • -javaagent:{path/of/downloaded-jar.jar}

Eg. running a container, setting the JVM arguments as part of MAVEN_OPTS.

  ...
  application-name:
    image: my/docker/image:version
    environment:
      MAVEN_OPTS: |
        -Dsts.service.name=`{{service-name}}`
        -Dsts.agent.host=`{{host-of-the-stackstate-agent}}`
        -Dsts.agent.port=`8126 {the default port for the trace agent api}`
        -javaagent:`{path/of/downloaded-jar.jar}`

Traces Installation - Kubernetes

• Set the following JVM arguments in your env variables for the container when running your pod

  • -Dsts.service.name={{service-name}}

  • -Dsts.agent.host={{host-of-the-stackstate-agent}}

  • -Dsts.agent.port=8126 {the default port for the trace agent api}

  • -javaagent:{path/of/downloaded-jar.jar}

Eg. running a container in a pod, setting the JVM arguments as part of MAVEN_OPTS.

  - name: application-name
    image: my/docker/image:version
    env:
      - name: MAVEN_OPTS
        value: |
        -Dsts.service.name=`{{service-name}}`
        -Dsts.agent.host=`{{host-of-the-stackstate-agent}}`
        -Dsts.agent.port=`8126 {the default port for the trace agent api}`
        -javaagent:`{path/of/downloaded-jar.jar}`

Compatibility

StackState officially supports the Java JRE 1.7 and higher versions of both Oracle JDK and OpenJDK. StackState does not officially support any early-access versions of Java.

Web Framework Compatibility

stackstate-java-agent includes support for automatically tracing the following web frameworks.

Server	Versions	Support Type	Instrumentation Names (used for configuration)
Akka-Http Server	10.0+	Fully Supported	akka-http, akka-http-server
Java Servlet Compatible	2.3+, 3.0+	Fully Supported	servlet, servlet-2, servlet-3
Jax-RS Annotations	JSR311-API	Fully Supported	jax-rs, jaxrs, jax-rs-annotations
Jetty (non-Servlet)	8+	Beta	jetty, jetty-8
Netty Http Server and Client	4.0+	Fully Supported	netty, netty-4.0, netty-4.1
Play	2.4-2.6	Fully Supported	play
Ratpack	1.4+	Beta	ratpack
Spark Java	2.3+	Beta	sparkjava (requires jetty)
Spring Web (MVC)	4.0+	Fully Supported	spring-web
Spring WebFlux	5.0+	Fully Supported	spring-webflux
Vert.x-Web	4.1.0+	Fully Supported	(requires netty)

Web Framework tracing provides: timing HTTP request to response, tags for the HTTP request (status code, method, etc), error and stacktrace capturing, linking work created within a web request and Distributed Tracing.

Note: Many application servers are Servlet compatible and are automatically covered by that instrumentation, such as Tomcat, Jetty, Websphere, Weblogic, etc. Also, frameworks like Spring Boot inherently work because it uses a Servlet compatible embedded application server.

Don't see your desired web frameworks? StackState is continuously adding additional support. Contact our support if you need help.

Networking Framework Compatibility

The stackstate-java-agent includes support for automatically tracing the following networking frameworks:

Framework	Versions	Support Type	Instrumentation Names (used for configuration)
Apache HTTP Client	4.0+	Fully Supported	httpclient
Apache HTTP Async Client	4.0+	Fully Supported	httpasyncclient, apache-httpasyncclient
AWS Java SDK	1.11+, 2.2+	Fully Supported	aws-sdk
gRPC	1.5+	Fully Supported	grpc, grpc-client, grpc-server
HttpURLConnection	all	Fully Supported	httpurlconnection, urlconnection
Kafka-Clients	0.11+	Fully Supported	kafka
Kafka-Streams	0.11+	Fully Supported	kafka, kafka-streams
Jax RS Clients	2.0+	Fully Supported	jax-rs, jaxrs, jax-rs-client
JMS	1 and 2	Fully Supported	jms
Rabbit AMQP	2.7+	Fully Supported	amqp, rabbitmq
OkHTTP	3.0+	Fully Supported	okhttp, okhttp-3

Networking tracing provides: timing request to response, tags for the request (e.g. response code), error and stacktrace capturing, and distributed tracing.

Don't see your desired networking framework? StackState is continuously adding additional support. Contact our support if you need help.

Data Store Compatibility

stackstate-java-agent includes support for automatically tracing the following database frameworks/drivers:

Database	Versions	Support Type	Instrumentation Names (used for configuration)
Couchbase	2.0+	Fully Supported	couchbase
Cassandra	3.X	Fully Supported	cassandra
Elasticsearch Transport	2.0+	Fully Supported	elasticsearch, elasticsearch-transport, elasticsearch-transport-{2,5,6} (pick one)
Elasticsearch Rest	5.0+	Fully Supported	elasticsearch, elasticsearch-rest, elasticsearch-rest-5, elasticsearch-rest-6
Hibernate	3.5+	Fully Supported	hibernate
JDBC	N/A	Fully Supported	jdbc
Jedis	1.4+	Fully Supported	redis
Lettuce	5.0+	Fully Supported	lettuce
MongoDB	3.0+	Fully Supported	mongo
SpyMemcached	2.12+	Fully Supported	spymemcached

stackstate-java-agent is also compatible with common JDBC drivers including:

• Apache Derby

• Firebird SQL

• H2 Database Engine

• HSQLDB

• IBM DB2

• MariaDB

• MSSQL (Microsoft SQL Server)

• MySQL

• Oracle

• Postgres SQL

Datastore tracing provides: timing request to response, query info (e.g. a sanitized query string), and error and stacktrace capturing.

Don't see your desired datastores? StackState is continuously adding additional support. Contact our support if you need help.

Other Framework Compatibility

stackstate-java-agent includes support for automatically tracing the following other frameworks:

Framework	Versions	Support Type	Instrumentation Names (used for configuration)
Slf4J MDC	1+	Fully Supported	mdc (See also dd.logs.injection config)
JSP Rendering	2.3+	Fully Supported	jsp, jsp-render
Dropwizard Views	0.7+	Fully Supported	dropwizard, dropwizard-view
Hystrix	1.4+	Fully Supported	hystrix
Twilio SDK	0+	Fully Supported	twilio-sdk

Don't see your desired framework? StackState is continuously adding additional support. Contact our support if you need help.

To improve visibility into applications using unsupported frameworks, consider:

• Adding custom instrumentation (with OpenTracing or the @Trace annotation).

• Submitting a pull request with the instrumentation for inclusion in a future release.

• Contacting our support and submitting a feature request.

Troubleshooting

To troubleshoot the java trace client add the following JVM arguments:

-Dstackstate.slf4j.simpleLogger.defaultLogLevel=debug

You can also verify whether the StackState Trace Agent has received the traces, by setting the logging level to debug and checking the trace-agent.log:

stackstate.yaml

log_level: debug

In Docker or Kubernetes, set the following environment variable for the StackState Agent

STS_LOG_LEVEL: "DEBUG"