Microsoft introduced the general availability of Application Insights at Connect() 2016, with a host of new features for Azure. One of the uses of Application Insights is for diagnostics, and Microsoft announced on a blog post today some of the features that will be coming soon with a Diagnostic Preview.
Here’s the gist:
- Improvements to the Application Map that allows you to see health status of multiple components, pin-point issues, and easily find exceptions.
- The new Application Insights Profiler, which allows you to see detailed example traces of slow requests and drill into detailed analysis of code to see where you are spending the most time.
The following video provides some additional details on what’s coming:
Essentially, Application Insights enables Azure users to stay updated on the status of their cloud. The Application Map with Error Pane now shows multiple Azure components on a single map with the ability to click on a component to access summary information about the most important errors along with the pertinent details.
The Application Insights Profiler, on the other hand, can be summarized as such:
The new Application Insights Profiler runs with low overhead and will periodically enable profiling on your production service and collect detailed examples of performance traces for your application when something interesting happens. This means you’ll have examples of interesting issues with detailed profiles (code-level breakdown of request execution time) for a range of issues and you’ll have the details you need to pinpoint where time is spent. We believe the profiler will be useful for several scenarios, from identifying and triaging your slowest requests (even in the 95th percentile long-tail), to pinpointing what specifically is slowing down a request using a prerecorded example.
As always, Microsoft would like your feedback, and you can provide it at the Azure portal. Let us know in the comments if you’re looking forward to enhancing your Azure experience with Application Insights and its new diagnostic capabilities.
