AWS X-Ray is a service that collects data about requests that your application serves, and provides tools you can use to view, filter, and gain insights into that data to identify issues and opportunities for optimization. AWS X-Ray helps developers analyze and debug production, distributed applications, such as those built using a microservices architecture.

1. AWS
X-RAY
CLOUDIFICATION

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X RAY
Copyright © 2018 AxEdge Consulting. All rights reserved.
AWS X-Ray is a service that collects data about requests that your application serves, and provides tools you
can use to view, filter, and gain insights into that data to identify issues and opportunities for optimization.
AWS X-Ray helps developers analyze and debug production, distributed applications, such as those built using
a microservices architecture.
With X-Ray, you can understand how your application and its underlying services are performing to identify and
troubleshoot the root cause of performance issues and errors.
X-Ray provides an end-to-end view of requests as they travel through your application, and shows a map of
your application’s underlying components.
You can use X-Ray to analyze both applications in development and in production, from simple three-tier
applications to complex microservices applications consisting of thousands of services.

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BENEFITS

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CONCEPTS

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X-RAY SDKS AND DAEMON
AWS X-Ray SDK
Available for Java, .NET, Node.js, Go (beta), and
Python (beta). SDKs are being open sourced
• Adds filters to automatically capture metadata
for calls to AWS services using the AWS SDK
• Non-AWS services over HTTP and HTTPS
Enables you to get started quickly without having
to manually instrument your application code to
log metadata about requests
AWS X-Ray Daemon
Receives data from the SDK over UDP and acts as a local
buffer; data is flushed to the backend every second or
when the local buffer fills.
• Available for Amazon Linux AMI, RHEL, Ubuntu, OS X,
and Windows
• Can be run anywhere as long as AWS credentials are
provided (e.g., EC2, ECS, on-premises, developer
machine, etc.)
AWS X-Ray SDKs and Daemon Lambda automatically enables AWS X-Ray if selected in
the Lambda console or API for an individual function

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X-RAY APIS
PutTraceSegments Uploads segment documents to
AWS X-Ray
BatchGetTraces Retrieves a list of traces
specified by ID
GetServiceGraph Retrieves a document that
describes services in your
application and their
connections, errors, faults,
response time, and duration
histograms for a specified time
frame
GetTraceGraph Retrieves a document that
describes services in your
application and their
connections, errors, faults, and
response time histograms for a
single trace
GetTraceSummaries Retrieves IDs and metadata for
traces available for a specified
time frame using an optional
filter

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PRICING
Free tier
• The first 100,000 traces recorded are free
• The first 1,000,000 traces retrieved or scanned are free
Additional charges
• Beyond the free tier, traces recorded cost $5 per million traces
• Beyond the free tier, traces retrieved or scanned cost $0.50 per million traces

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SECURITY
You can use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to grant X-Ray permissions to users and compute resources in your account. IAM
controls access to the X-Ray service at the API level to enforce permissions uniformly, regardless of which client (console, AWS SDK, AWS
CLI) your users employ.
To use the X-Ray console to view service maps and segments, you only need read permissions. To enable console access, add the
AWSXrayReadOnlyAccess managed policy to your IAM user.
For local development and testing, create an IAM user with read and write permissions. Generate access keys for the user and store them in
the standard AWS SDK location. You can use these credentials with the X-Ray daemon, the AWS CLI, and the AWS SDK.
To create a role for use with X-Ray

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