Azure Functions

Azure Functions allows you to build simple applications built on a serverless architecture using functions called by various triggers (for example, HTTP requests, scheduled triggers, queues, or storage events).

With the growing popularity of serverless applications, end-to-end tracing becomes even more important due to its nature of heavily distributed workloads.

Note:
DESK Azure Functions support is currently in Early Adopter Release and provides only limited support for pre-compiled Azure Functions that are written in .NET, running on Windows, and operated on an "App Service Plan".

Capabilities

DESK offers the following capabilities for Azure Functions.

  • Code-module support for .NET/.NET Core using any available trigger
  • End-to-end tracing across multiple functions and other instrumented services and applications.
  • Limited full-stack monitoring powered by OneAgent.
  • Extension for easy deployment of OneAgent
  • Enhanced support for Azure App Service metadata such as compute mode, SKU, and more.

Azure multi-function trace

Limitations

Since Azure Functions are a fully managed hosting platform built on top of Azure App Services, functions/applications are deployed into a sandboxed environment that doesn't allow direct access to the underlying operating system. This results in some restrictions for OneAgent:

  • Log monitoring isn't available
  • Enhanced I/O monitoring requires Azure Monitor integration
  • Code-module support limited to .NET/.NET Core

Roadmap

Installation

Follow the instructions provided in the following topic to deploy OneAgent on Azure functions.

Deploy OneAgent SiteExtension