Application Insights slide deck presented by Ken Cenerelli at our January CTTDNUG session

1. Building high performance
software with Microsoft
Application Insights
Ken Cenerelli
@KenCenerelli

2. What is it?
 Application Insights offers availability monitoring for your
deployed live applications
 What it allows you to do:
 Detect issues faster (dashboards, alerts)
 Solve the right problems
 Continuously improve your applications
 Understand what your users are doing with them
 Make telemetry data an integral part of your development cycle

3. Overview
 Launched in November 2013 as part of Visual Studio Online
 Derived from Microsoft's System Center Operations Manager
2012 (SCOM)
 Uses similar technology available through SCOM:
 Application Performance Monitoring (APM)
 Global Service Monitor (GSM)
 Microsoft Monitoring Agent (MMA)
 Managed from the cloud
 No desktop client or local storage needed on your apps

4. Two Versions
 Application Insights for Visual Studio Online (Old)
 There will be no new development for the older version
 Use 1.x version of Application Insights
 Application Insights in Microsoft Azure (New)
 New features being added continuously
 Need a subscription to Microsoft Azure
 Use Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 or later with 2.x version of
Application Insights

5. Which one to use?
Application Insights for VSO
 Monitor a web service or web app
 Monitor a Windows Store or
Windows Phone app
 Monitor a Java web application at
the server
 Create a continuously-updated
dashboard showing your metrics
 Azure preview has customization
 Must refresh dashboard manually
Application Insights in Azure
 Availability and responsiveness of
any public web site
 Performance of an ASP.NET web
server (on premise or Azure site)
 Usage analytics of a web
application
If in doubt, Microsoft recommends using Application Insights in Azure

6. Demo
 Visual Studio Online overview
 Windows App with Application Insights
 Implement Usage Monitoring
 Visual Studio Online analytics dashboard

7. Application Insights in
Microsoft Azure Preview
 Launched in Fall 2014
 Available through Microsoft Azure Preview Portal
 Pro: Microsoft’s development efforts are focused here
 Con: Functionality in VSO (e.g. Windows apps
monitoring) not yet migrated

8. Microsoft Azure basics
 Need an account
 Works with the free trial
 Costs
 Plans and pricing?
 Deciding factors
 All VSO functionality will eventually migrate to Azure
 VSO version will eventually go away
 Tradeoff: Save money now versus migrating to Azure later

9. Demo
 Microsoft Azure Preview Portal overview
 Create a new Application Insights resource
 Use with a new project
 Use with an existing project

10. Availability Monitoring
with Web Tests
 Works for any web application on any platform
 Test the availability and performance of your app from
across the world
 Similar to load testing web applications

11. Demo
 Creating and diagnosing a web test

12. Telemetry Export
 Use the Continuous Export button on your resource’s
Overview blade
 Export your raw Application Insights telemetry data in
JSON format to an Azure storage account
 From there you can download it or write code to process
it into usable format

13. Resources
 Get started with Application Insights for Azure Preview:
 http://bit.ly/1y4lZZH
 http://bit.ly/1D1eUet
 Application Insights for Visual Studio Online Channel 9 videos:
 http://bit.ly/1A8HnLy
 Get a Free Microsoft Azure Trial Account:
 http://azure.microsoft.com
 Contact Details:
 @KenCenerelli
 Ken_Cenerelli@Outlook.com
 kencenerelli.wordpress.com