Tracing Dubbo service with Apache Skywalking

Introduction to Apache Skywalking

Apache Skywalking(Incubator) is the APM system that it designed for micro-services architectures and cloud native architecture systems and supports distribute tracking. Apache skywalking (incubator) collects and analyzes the trace data and generates the relationship between the application and the service metric, Apache skywalking supports multiple languages agent, for example Java,.net core,Node.js and Go.

Currently, Skywalking has supported analysis the operation of distributed systems from 6 visual dimensions. The overview view is a global view of your applications and components, including the number of components and applications, application alarm fluctuations, slow service lists, and application throughput; The topology shows the topological relationship of the whole application; The application view represents the upstream and downstream relationship of the application from single application, TOP N services and servers, JVM, host and process info. The service view focuses on the operation of a single service portal and the upstream and downstream dependencies of this service and it helps the user to optimize and monitor a single service; the trace graph shows all the buried points of the invocation and the execution time of each burial point, and the alarm view is based on the configuration threshold for the application, server, service for real-time alarms

Dubbo and Apache Skywalking

Build the Dubbo demo project

The Dubbo demo has been uploaded to the GitHub repository.

API project

Service interface definition:

package org.apache.skywalking.demo.interfaces;

public interface HelloService {
	String sayHello(String name);
}

Service provider project

package org.apache.skywalking.demo.provider;

@Service(version = "${demo.service.version}",
	application = "${dubbo.application.id}",
	protocol = "${dubbo.protocol.id}",
	registry = "${dubbo.registry.id}", timeout = 60000)
public class HelloServiceImpl implements HelloService {

	public String sayHello(String name) {
		LockSupport.parkNanos(TimeUnit.SECONDS.toNanos(1));
		return "Hello, " + name;
	}

}

Service consumer project

package org.apache.skywalking.demo.consumer;

@RestController
public class ConsumerController {

	private static int COUNT = 0;

	@Reference(version = "${demo.service.version}",
		application = "${dubbo.application.id}",
		url = "dubbo://localhost:20880", timeout = 60000)
	private HelloService helloService;

	@GetMapping("/sayHello/{name}")
	public String sayHello(@PathVariable(name = "name") String name) {
		if ((COUNT++) % 3 == 0){
			throw new RuntimeException();
		}
		LockSupport.parkNanos(TimeUnit.SECONDS.toNanos(2));
		return helloService.sayHello(name);
	}
}

Deploy Apache Skywalking

Apache skywalking (Incubator) offers two deployment modes: single-node mode and cluster mode,Here is the single-node mode deployment step, and more about how to deploy skywalking with cluster mode, please reference document.

Third-party components

1. JDK 8+
2. Elasticsearch 5.x

Deployment step

1. Download Apache Skywalking Collector
2. Deploy Elasticsearch service
   • Set cluster.name to CollectorDBCluster
   • Set network.host to 0.0.0.0
   • Start elasticsearch service
3. Unzip and start the Skywalking Collector. Run the ’ bin/startup.sh ’ command to start skywalking Collector

Deploy the demo

Before you deploy the demo service, please run the following command:

./mvnw clean package

Deploy the provider service

java -jar -javaagent:$AGENT_PATH/skywalking-agent.jar -Dskywalking.agent.application_code=dubbo-provider -Dskywalking.collector.servers=localhost:10800 dubbo-provider/target/dubbo-provider.jar

Deploy the consumer service

java -jar -javaagent:$AGENT_PATH/skywalking-agent.jar -Dskywalking.agent.application_code=dubbo-consumer -Dskywalking.collector.servers=localhost:10800 dubbo-consumer/target/dubbo-consumer.jar 

visit demo service

curl http://localhost:8080/sayHello/test

Skywalking scren snapshot

Dashboard

Topology

Application view

JVM Information

Service view

Consumer side

provider side

Trace

Span info

Alarm view