Source URL: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/management-tools/get-to-know-cloud-observability-application-monitoring/
Source: Cloud Blog
Title: Application monitoring in Google Cloud: Bridging manual and AI-assisted troubleshooting
Feedly Summary: As developers and operators, you know that having access to the right information in the proper context is crucial for effective troubleshooting. This is why organizations invest a lot upfront curating monitoring resources across different business units: so information is easy to find and contextualize when needed.
Today we are reducing the need for this upfront investment with an out-of-the-box Application Monitoring experience for your organization on Google Cloud within Cloud Observability.
Application Monitoring consists of a set of pre-curated dashboards with relevant metrics and logs mapped to a user-defined application in App Hub. It incorporates best practices pioneered by Google Site Reliability Engineers (SRE) to optimize manual troubleshooting and unlock AI-assisted troubleshooting.
Application Monitoring automatically labels and brings together key telemetry for your application into a centralized experience, making it easy to discover, filter and correlate trends. It also feeds application context into Gemini Cloud Assist Investigations, for AI-assisted troubleshooting.
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1. Application, service and workload dashboards
No more spending hours configuring application dashboards.
From the moment you describe your application in App Hub, Application Monitoring starts to automatically build dashboards tailored to your environment. Each dashboard comprises relevant telemetry for your application and is searchable, filterable and ready for deep dives — no configuration required.
The dashboards offer an overview of charts detailing the SRE Four Golden Signals: traffic, latency, error rate, and saturation. This provides a high-level view of application performance, integrating automatically collected system metrics across various services and workloads such as load balancers, Cloud Run, GKE workloads, MIGs, and databases. From this overview, you can then drill down into services or workloads with performance issues or active alerts to access detailed metrics and logs.
For example in the image below, a user defined an App Hub application called Cymbal BnB app, with multiple services and workloads. The flow below shows the automatically generated experience with golden signals, alerts and relevant logs.
Figure 1 – A user’s flow from an App Hub defined application (i.e. Cymbal BnB) to the automatic prebuilt Application Monitoring experience in Cloud Observability
2. Labels and context propagation
See application labels propagated seamlessly across Google Cloud
Once Application Monitoring is enabled, your application labels are propagated across Google Cloud, so you can see and use them to filter and focus on the most essential signals across the logs, metrics and trace explorers.
Figure 2 – Logs Explorer showing application automatically tagged with application labels
Figure 3 – Metrics Explorer showing application labels automatically associated with metrics
Figure 4 – Trace Explorer showing AppHub label Integration
3. Gemini Cloud Assist Investigations
Troubleshoot issues faster with AI powered Investigations.
Gemini Cloud Assist’s investigation feature makes it easier to troubleshoot issues because application boundaries and relationships have been propagated into the AI model, grounding it in context about your environment.
Figure 5 – Seamless entry point into Gemini Cloud Assist powered Investigations from application logs
Note – Gemini Cloud Assist Investigations is currently in private preview
Try Application Monitoring today
The new Application Monitoring experience provides a low-effort unified view of application and infrastructure performance for your troubleshooting needs.
Take advantage of the new Google Cloud Application Monitoring experience by:
Visiting your Cloud console
Setting up Applications in AppHub
Adding Services and Workloads to your Application
Navigating to Application Monitoring in Cloud Observability to see your automatically built experience
Enable your Gemini Cloud Assist SKU and sign up for the trusted tester program to get access to the Investigations experience
Related docs
Application Monitoring docs
AppHub docs
Apphub coverage docs
AI Summary and Description: Yes
Summary: The text discusses Google Cloud’s new Application Monitoring feature within Cloud Observability, aimed at reducing the manual configuration burden for developers and operators. It emphasizes the integration of AI-assisted troubleshooting via Gemini Cloud Assist and the seamless management of application telemetry, providing streamlined insights for improved application performance.
Detailed Description:
The provided text outlines the launch of Google Cloud’s Application Monitoring feature, which plays a significant role in enhancing infrastructure security and operational efficiency through better visibility and AI integration. Here are the major points of significance:
– **Simplified Monitoring Setup**: The Application Monitoring feature offers a standardized, out-of-the-box experience that minimizes the initial investment required for developers to curate dashboards. This improvement allows quicker access to relevant data, aiding troubleshooting efforts.
– **Automated Dashboard Generation**:
– Application Monitoring creates tailored dashboards based on user-defined applications in App Hub, encompassing key performance metrics and logs.
– It focuses on the SRE Four Golden Signals (traffic, latency, error rate, saturation) to provide a comprehensive view of application performance.
– Integration with various Google Cloud services (like load balancers and databases) is automatic, enhancing operational visibility.
– **Labels and Context Propagation**:
– Application labels from App Hub are automatically propagated across Google Cloud services, ensuring that users can efficiently filter and analyze logs, metrics, and traces.
– This feature enhances the capability to focus on essential signals within vast data sets, which is critical for security and compliance monitoring.
– **AI-Powered Troubleshooting**:
– The Gemini Cloud Assist’s investigation feature leverages AI to simplify the troubleshooting process by providing context about application boundaries and relationships.
– This AI integration allows for faster identification and resolution of issues, significantly reducing downtime and improving infrastructure resilience.
– **Accessibility**: The Application Monitoring experience can be accessed via the Google Cloud console, guiding users through application setup and exploration of performance metrics without requiring deep technical expertise in configuration.
– **Future-Ready**: The text notes that Gemini Cloud Assist Investigations is currently under private preview, indicating ongoing enhancements and potential future capabilities that could further strengthen application and infrastructure security.
In summary, Google Cloud’s Application Monitoring feature is positioned as a crucial tool for developers and operational teams seeking efficient application monitoring and troubleshooting solutions, merging AI capabilities with traditional monitoring frameworks for enhanced performance and security insights. This innovation aligns with modern trends in DevSecOps and cloud infrastructure management, making it essential for professionals in those domains to stay informed.