AWS X-Ray

One of the challenges of modern applications is they are built from a number of distributed components and services, making it difficult to determine the cause of issues and isolate the underlying responsible service or component. For example, a ASP.NET application may be running on a number of load-balanced EC2 instances, with each instance depending on a SQL Server database hosted on Amazon RDS, and additional functionality being provided by a number of microservices hosted across EC2 instances, containers, and Lambda functions. Although CloudWatch provides rich capabilities to monitor each individual component, trying to isolate which distributed components is causing a problem is a challenge in its own right.

AWS X-Ray provides an SDK that allows you to trace incoming requests to your application, and trace requests from your application to AWS services, HTTP services, and databases. You can enable AWS X-Ray tracing without having to modify your application.

For each request into your application, data is recorded as a series of segments that are grouped into a trace. Once a trace is recorded, you can view it from the trace history, allowing you to inspect your application’s performance and behavior to help focus on potential problems.

AWS X-Ray trace example

AWS X-Ray can also display service graphs, which show graphical views of the services used by your application, helping to isolate various issues, including faults, latency spikes, and possible bottlenecks.

AWS X-Ray service graph example showing integration across various components

By providing a cohesive view of end-to-end application behavior, AWS X-Ray makes it possible to accurately and quickly identify sources of problems in distributed systems. At a glance, it helps locate an API, microservice, or component with problems, allowing you to drill down farther with more detailed tools, such as Amazon CloudWatch.