What are the best practices for monitoring and troubleshooting an Akka Streams application? What tools and techniques are available to diagnose performance or resource problems?
To effectively monitor and troubleshoot an Akka Streams application, follow these best practices :
1. Utilize built-in monitoring tools : Lightbend Telemetry provides metrics on stream performance, resource usage, and error rates.
2. Use asynchronous boundaries : They isolate components, allowing for better identification of bottlenecks or failures.
3. Implement backpressure strategies : This prevents overwhelming downstream components and helps identify slow consumers.
4. Monitor thread pools : Keep track of dispatcher utilization to detect contention or starvation issues.
5. Log errors and warnings : Ensure proper logging configuration to capture relevant information for debugging.
6. Test with realistic workloads : Simulate production scenarios during development to uncover potential issues early.
For diagnosing performance or resource problems, consider using the following tools and techniques:
1. VisualVM or JProfiler : Analyze JVM heap usage, garbage collection, and CPU consumption.
2. Kamon APM : Gain insights into system-level metrics, such as latency, throughput, and error rates.
3. Custom metrics : Instrument your code to collect specific data points related to your application’s behavior.
