On the X-Ray dashboard, the Service map provides a graphical representation of your application’s architecture. The map shows how different services interact and highlights any issues such as errors or high latency.
Traces:
Click on Traces in the left-hand menu to view a list of traces for different requests within your application. Each trace contains details about individual segments, providing insights into how a request was processed by your application.
Insights:
Select Insights to explore potential performance bottlenecks or errors detected in your application. Insights help identify anomalies based on collected trace data.
Analytics:
Under Analytics, explore the data collected by X-Ray, including response times, error rates, and request volumes. This provides a detailed view of how different parts of your application are performing.
3. Exploring the AWS Well-Architected Framework Pillars
Use the Service map to get an operational overview of your application's architecture. The map shows how various services interact and where errors or high latency occur, helping you quickly identify operational issues.
Traces Analysis:
In the Traces section, review individual traces to analyze the path requests take through your application. This detailed insight into request processing helps with troubleshooting and identifying areas for operational improvements.
Insights:
Under Insights, view any detected anomalies in your application, such as high error rates or latency spikes. Regularly reviewing these insights helps ensure that your application runs smoothly and aligns with operational best practices.
Performance Trends:
In Analytics, explore historical data to identify trends in application performance, including error rates and request volumes. Monitoring these trends helps proactively address potential operational issues.
In the Service map and Traces sections, ensure that sensitive information (e.g., Personally Identifiable Information - PII) is not inadvertently included in trace data. Proper configuration of X-Ray SDKs and filtering sensitive data before sending traces to X-Ray is critical for maintaining data security.
Access Control:
While read-only access does not allow changes, verify that IAM roles and policies used for accessing X-Ray are configured with the least privilege principle. Only authorized services and users should have access to X-Ray data.
Encryption:
Confirm that trace data is being sent securely over HTTPS to the X-Ray service. While direct visibility into encryption settings is limited with read-only access, ensure that your application uses appropriate X-Ray SDKs that follow security best practices for data encryption in transit.
Under Traces, examine how frequently traces are collected and the distribution of traces across different services. Consistent trace collection is crucial for identifying performance bottlenecks and maintaining application reliability.
Error and Latency Monitoring:
Use Insights to monitor error rates and latency for different segments of your application. Identifying and addressing these issues promptly helps maintain the reliability of your application.
Dependency Analysis:
In the Service map, explore the dependencies between services. This helps you understand how service failures might propagate through your application and allows you to implement strategies to mitigate cascading failures.
While you cannot modify sampling rules with read-only access, check if sampling is implemented in the Traces section. Proper sampling rates reduce the volume of trace data collected, helping optimize costs while still providing sufficient data for analysis.
Usage Monitoring:
Use the Analytics section to review the volume of traces and data collected. Identify patterns in trace volumes to adjust your sampling rate (if needed) and reduce costs associated with excessive data collection.
Data Retention:
Although direct access to modify data retention policies is restricted with read-only access, regularly review the amount of trace data in the Traces section. This insight can guide decisions on data retention strategies to optimize storage costs.
Use the Service map to identify performance bottlenecks in your application. High-latency nodes or error-prone services are highlighted, allowing you to focus optimization efforts where they are most needed.
Tracing and Latency Analysis:
In the Traces section, analyze end-to-end request paths to pinpoint which segments of your application introduce latency. Understanding these details helps optimize code and resource configurations for better performance.
Insights for Anomaly Detection:
Under Insights, monitor latency anomalies and investigate their root causes. Proactively addressing these issues ensures that your application maintains optimal performance.
Dependency Optimization:
Explore the Service map to review dependencies between services. Identifying services that introduce unnecessary complexity or latency helps optimize your application architecture for better performance.
Use Amazon CloudWatch (if integrated with X-Ray) to set up alarms for metrics such as high error rates or increased latency. This proactive monitoring complements X-Ray’s tracing capabilities for improved operational awareness.
AWS Config and Security Hub:
If AWS Config and AWS Security Hub are enabled, review compliance findings related to X-Ray configurations. This helps ensure that your application’s monitoring and tracing configurations adhere to best practices for security and operational efficiency.