You can configure the AppDynamics Java Agent to detect entry points for Apache Kafka consumer activity using KafkaConsumer.poll()(introduced in Kafka v0.10) and Kafka SimpleConsumer.fetch()(both introduced in Kafka v0.9). Prior to version 0.11, the Kafka payload did not include a location to store correlation data, so end-to-end Business Transaction correlation is only possible with Kafka client and broker versions 0.11 or greater.
KafkaConsumer.poll
To instrument Kafka consumer entry points using KafkaConsumer.poll() or Kafka Streams, identify the method where the consumer reads messages in a loop in a custom interceptor definition. We instrument the iterator's next method to start and end the BT for each message. There could be many iterators used for iterating messages but we only support iterators that are of type:
Identify the class and method of the loop that processes messages from Kafka. Consider for example a class MyConsumer that employs the following loop to poll and process messages from Kafka:
private void pollMessages() throws Exception {
ConsumerRecords<String, String> records = kafkaConsumer.poll(1000);
for (ConsumerRecord<String, String> record : records) {
//Processing of the records
System.out.println(record.value());
}
}
CODE
For this case, you want to intercept:
Class: MyConsumer
Method: pollMessages
Use your preferred text editor to create and edit a file named custom-interceptors.xml at the following path: <agent_home>/<version_number>/conf
For example: /usr/home/appdynamics/appagent/ver4.3.1.0/conf/custom-interceptors.xml
Copy the following XML to custom-interceptors.xml:
After the Java Agent reads the updated configuration, it detects consumer activity and upstream Kafka queue. The application flow map shows the tier receiving data from the Kafka queue.
Kafka SimpleConsumer Entry Points
To enable consumer entry points for Kafka clients that retrieve messages using SimpleConsumer.fetch(), register the enable-kafka-consumer node property with a value of "true".
Kafka consumer activity shows up as an exit call in this case.