windows azure java application diagnostics tool

Question

I am currently trying to move a java application on windows azure environment and currently struggling with diagnostics tools. I have read features & reviews of tools like: Cerebreta, Splunk, Spotlight etc. I want to make sure if all these tool will work for java if not then what tools should I use for the purpose.

Note: application would be running on Tomcat in azure environment.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You're not clear if you will be running on Cloud Services, a Virtual Machine or on a Windows Azure Web Site, but since you are talking about Windows Azure Diagnostics specifically I'll assume you are looking at Cloud Services only.

The Windows Azure Diagnostics features work on Cloud Services regardless of what type of language you are using. The diagnostics.wadcfg file needs to be defined and included in the root of your worker role or the bin directory of your web role (you may need to experiment where it goes on a java web role). You also need to include the diagnostics module in the service definition file and include the storage connection string for it in the service configuration file just as the first link described. Again, this is regardless of language you are writing in. The Diagnostics agent is installed on the instances for you and then uses the diagnostics.wadcfg file to determine how it collects data and how often to transfer that data to the storage account. The links above will explain all this.

The Cerebrata tool (full disclosure: I work for Cerebrata), is used to analyze the diagnostics data after it has been centralized into a storage account. Since this uses the data in the storage account it won't matter you are writing your app in Java as far as Cerebrata is concerned.

I'm not overly familiar with splunk, but from what I know you'll want to install the splunk server on a Windows Azure VM so that it is persistent. In order for the server to be able to reach other VMs running your app they will need to be in the same virtual network. It looks like splunk uses WMI, so you should be okay, but they have a free version you can use to try this out and verify it works. Make sure to check the licensing with Splunk to make sure you can install it in a virtualized environment or anything that would keep you from using it in Azure.

There are also other options like New Relic, Azure Watch and more.

I'll also recommend the documentation for Java Development on Windows Azure.