Monitoring PHP

Supported versions

Configuring PHP sensor

After you install the Instana agent, the PHP sensor is automatically installed and configured with reasonable defaults. Usually, you don't need to modify these settings in the Instana agent's configuration.yaml file: <agent_install_dir>/etc/instana/configuration.yaml.

The following YAML snippet shows the available settings:

# PHP Tracing
#com.instana.plugin.php:
#  # Lightweight PHP Tracing. Requires the Instana Tracing extension. Enabled by default.
#  tracing:
#    # Enabling tracing will automatically download the Instana Tracing
#    # extension and enable it in your php.ini. If you are using preforked
#    # PHP workers, like PHP-FPM, you will need to restart them. Disabling
#    # tracing again will not remove the extension. It will only disable the
#    # tracing sensor.
#    enabled: true
#    # Whether to install the PHP Tracing extension. Default is true. Disabling
#    # the installation will still create the TraceAcceptor daemon though.
#    installExtension: true
#    # The filename to use when querying Apache or PHP-CGI installations for
#    # environment data such as version, architecture, etc. By default, this
#    # is "instana." + Math.random(). + ".php". Uncommenting the setting
#    # as follows will force a static filename instead.
#    phpInfoFilename: instana.php
#    # Pins the PHP Tracing extension to download and install to a specific
#    # version. This can be used to rollback to previous versions of the
#    # extension or to test beta versions (when asked to do so). Expects
#    # the version to be given as major.minory.patch, e.g. 0.3.7
#    pinExtensionVersion: x.y.z
#    # The absolute path to the script to trigger whenever the sensor installed
#    # a different version of the PHP tracing extension than is currently
#    # installed. Works for upgrades and downgrades. Default is empty.
#    notificationScript: /path/to/restart_php.sh
#    # The number of executor threads to use for processing traces. This setting
#    # can be used to fine tune the PHP sensor for specific load environments.
#    # Defaults to the number of available logical processors or 8 (whichever is less).
#    # In general, you don't need to touch this setting unless advised to do so.
#    executorThreads: n
#    # The maximum number of traces the sensor is allowed to keep in the backlog
#    # for processing. Can be used in conjunction with executorThreads to fine tune
#    # the sensor for specific load environments. In general, you don't need to touch
#    # this setting unless advised to do so. Defaults to 1000.
#    executorQueueLimit: 1000
#    # Port on which the sensor is listening for traces. Changing this setting will
#    # not automatically update any .ini files created for the PHP Tracing extension.
#    # In general, you don't need to touch this setting unless advised to do so.
#    # Defaults to port 16816.
#    port: 16816
#    # Whether to remove values in SQL queries to prevent sensitive data from
#    # reaching our backend. This can help to improve agent performance in certain
#    # setups. In general, you don't need to touch this setting unless advised to do so.
#    sanitizeSql: true

Configuring PHP-FPM sensor

After you install the Instana agent, the PHP-FPM sensor is automatically installed and configured with defaults.

The following YAML snippet shows the available settings:

#PHP-FPM monitoring
 #com.instana.plugin.phpfpm:
 #  # Enabled (true) by default. Update it to 'false' to disable PHP-FPM discovery and sensor.
 #  enabled: true
 #  monitoring:
 #    # Enabling PHP-FPM worker pool monitoring collects worker pool process metrics like CPU and memory
 #    # usage every second. Enabled (true) by default.
 #    workerPoolMonitoring: true 

The PHP-FPM sensor monitors FPM worker pools by default. This monitoring might prevent worker processes from terminating due to the sensor sending automatic status check CGI requests in the background. To avoid this behavior, you can disable worker pool monitoring by setting the workerPoolMonitoring option in the PHP-FPM sensor plugin configuration to false.

SetHandler application/x-httpd-php

> "PHP Sensor is failing because of "NO Version found"

Viewing metrics

To view metrics for PHP, complete the following steps:

1. In the sidebar of the Instana UI, select Infrastructure.
2. Click a specific monitored host.

You can see a host dashboard with all the collected metrics and monitored processes.

Like any other Instana sensor, the PHP sensor does not need any configuration. It automatically detects your PHP installation and collects the following data from the installation:

• Configuration data
• Performance metrics
• Health signatures

For PHP, the configuration data, performance metrics, and the health signatures depend on the SAPI used. For more information, see Supported PHP SAPIs.

Tracing

Instana provides both automatic and manual instrumentation for PHP.

Integrating with OpenTracing

Instana provides a separate PHP SDK for tracing with OpenTracing. Unlike Instana's own PHP instrumentation, the OpenTracing SDK requires you to manually instrument your code. Traces that are generated through the PHP OpenTracing SDK are separate from traces that are generated by Instana's own tracing.

PHP OpenTracing SDK is supported on Linux operating systems only.

Integrating with OpenTelemetry

Instana supports OpenTelemetry instrumentation for PHP applications. The OpenTelemetry PHP extension has automatic instrumentation capability (also called zero-code instrumentation) that generates traces and exports them to configured endpoints, such as the OpenTelemetry Collector and the backend.

To bring these spans into Instana, you can use one of the following exporters:

• The default OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) exporter: It allows the Instana agent to receive traces through an OTLP endpoint.
• Instana OpenTelemetry PHP exporter: It converts the OpenTelemetry spans into Instana spans before they are exported directly to the Instana agent.

The OpenTelemetry traces are visualized in the Instana UI, similar to Instana PHP traces. For more information, see OpenTelemetry Integration for PHP Applications.

Serverless tracing

Instana supports serverless tracing for the AWS Fargate environment. Similar to the Instana native extension, the serverless extension also enables the PHP tracing by default. For more information on configuration details, see Monitoring AWS Fargate.

To enable the serverless tracing, make sure that the following requirements are met:

• OpenSSL3 or OpenSSL1.1 is installed in the PHP container.
• INSTANA_ENDPOINT_URL and INSTANA_AGENT_KEY environment variables are available to the PHP. For more information on how to configure these variables, see Configuring task definition.

PHP serverless tracing and native tracing (with Instana agent) cannot work together because, serverless tracer requires OpenSSL dependency, which conflicts with the native tracing implementation.

Profiling

The PHP profiler supports CPU usage profile type and it is available only when the native PHP Tracer is used with the Instana agent. The PHP profiler is not supported in serverless monitoring.

For more information about enabling it, see Configuring profiling.