Monitoring Spring Boot

Supported operating systems

The supported operating systems of Spring Boot sensor are consistent with host agents requirements, which can be checked in the Supported operating systems section of each host agent, such as Supported operating systems Linux.

Supported versions and support policy

The following table shows the latest supported version and support policy:

For more information about the support policy, see Support strategy for sensors.

Supported tracing

For this technology, Instana supports tracing. For more information, see Instrumented frameworks and libraries.

Step 1: Configure Spring Boot Actuator

To configure Spring Boot Actuator, add the following dependency in the pom.xml file:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
</dependency>

The Spring Boot Actuator generates and exposes operational endpoints of a running Spring Boot application.

Step 2: Enable Java Management Extensions (JMX)

For Spring Boot 2.2.x and later, enable JMX by setting the following property in the application.properties file:

spring.jmx.enabled=true

Enabling JMX exposes data and resources from your Spring Boot application as managed beans (MBeans).

Step 3: Expose Spring Boot management MBeans

If the endpoints are disabled in the application.properties file with the following configuration settings, then you need to expose the Spring Boot management MBeans because the sensor depends on the MBeans to collect metrics from the Spring Boot application:

management.endpoints.enabled-by-default=false

To expose the MBeans, enable the following endpoints in the application.properties file:

management.endpoint.info.enabled=true
management.endpoint.health.enabled=true
management.endpoint.metrics.enabled=true
management.endpoint.env.enabled=true

Instana queries metrics from the Spring Boot management MBean org.springframework.boot:type=Endpoint,name=Metrics. No need to configure the authentication or credentials for secured actuator endpoints.

For Spring Boot 3.x, make sure that the following directive is available in the application.properties file:

management.endpoints.jmx.exposure.include=env,health,info,metrics

Step 4: Expose endpoints over HTTP

For Spring Boot 2 and later, Spring Boot Actuator provides dependency management and auto-configuration for Micrometer. Depending on the Spring Boot version, different Micrometer metrics are available on the JVM dashboard.

You must carefully consider when to expose the endpoints over HTTP because the endpoints might contain sensitive information. By default, only the health endpoint is exposed. For more information, see Exposing Endpoints.

To exclude specific endpoints from HTTP, use the following directive:

management.endpoints.web.exposure.exclude=health,info

To exclude all endpoints from HTTP, use the following directive:

management.endpoints.web.exposure.exclude=*

Step 5: Show environment values in text

Before the application configuration properties can be displayed in the Instana UI, you need to make extra changes in the application.properties file. Otherwise, these properties are shown as ****** because of sensitive values. For more information, see Sanitize Sensitive Values.

To always show the values as clear text, use the following configuration in the application.properties file:

management.endpoint.env.show-values=ALWAYS

Step 6: Name Spring Boot apps

Instana extracts the name for the Spring Boot instances from the following sources:

• spring.application.name property: If this property is defined in your application configuration, its value is used as the application name. For Spring Boot 3, to specify the name of the Spring Boot application, set the spring.application.name property in the application.properties file as follows:

  spring.application.name=<Your_Application_Name>
  

• build-info.properties file: If spring.application.name is not defined, Instana retrieves the name for the Spring Boot application from the build-info.properties file. This file can be generated, for example, with spring-boot-maven-plugin:

  <plugin>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
      <executable>true</executable>
    </configuration>
    <executions>
      <execution>
        <goals>
          <goal>build-info</goal>
        </goals>
        <configuration>
          <additionalProperties>
            <name>${project.artifactId}</name>
            <version>${project.version}</version>
          </additionalProperties>
        </configuration>
      </execution>
    </executions>
  </plugin>
  

  For more information about Integrating with Actuator, see Spring Boot Maven Plugin Documentation.

Step 7: Set health-interval parameter (optional)

By default, Instana queries the health of the Spring Boot app every 10 minutes by querying the management MBean org.springframework.boot:type=Endpoint,name=Health.

To configure the desired health-interval parameter, set the value in seconds:

com.instana.plugin.springboot:
  health-interval: 30

The health check can introduce new downstream calls, depending on the health check implementation. If the health check fails, then you see a warning message that indicates the root cause.

Endpoints and HTTP sessions

Instana Spring Boot sensor collects the following metrics from endpoints and HTTP sessions:

Datasources

Instana Spring Boot sensor collects the following monitoring data from the datasources:

Health Signatures

For each sensor, a curated knowledgebase of health signatures is evaluated continuously against the incoming metrics and is used to raise issues or incidents that depend on the user impact.

Built-in events trigger issues or incidents based on failing health signatures on entities, and custom events trigger issues or incidents based on the thresholds of an individual metric of any selected entity.

For more information about built-events for the Spring Boot sensor, see the Built-in events reference.

Spring Boot Actuator is not configured

Monitoring issue type: springboot_actuator_not_configured

To configure Spring Boot Actuator, see Configuring Spring Boot Actuator.

JMX is not enabled

Monitoring issue type: springboot_jmx_not_enabled

To enable JMX, see Configuring Spring Boot Actuator.

If the spring.main.lazy-initialization property is enabled, you must update the Spring Boot version to 2.4.12 or later.