elastic/apmfiber
Official Go agent for Elastic APM that traces application operations and sends performance metrics to APM Server.
What is elastic/apmfiber?
Elastic APM Agent for Go is the official Go package for Elastic Application Performance Monitoring (APM). It enables developers to trace operations in their Go applications, collecting performance metrics, errors, and distributed traces that are sent to the Elastic APM Server. This helps identify performance bottlenecks, monitor application health, and troubleshoot issues in production environments.
Go developers and DevOps teams who need to monitor the performance and reliability of their Go applications, particularly those running microservices or distributed systems that require observability.
Developers choose this agent because it's the official, well-integrated solution for Elastic APM with support for popular Go frameworks, providing comprehensive monitoring with minimal code changes and seamless integration with the Elastic Stack for visualization and analysis.
Overview
The Elastic APM Agent for Go is the official package that enables developers to monitor and trace the execution of operations within Go applications. It collects performance metrics, errors, and distributed traces, sending them to the Elastic APM Server for visualization and analysis in Kibana. This helps identify performance bottlenecks, errors, and latency issues in production environments.
Key Features
- Application Performance Monitoring — Traces requests, database queries, and external HTTP calls to provide detailed performance insights.
- Error Tracking — Automatically captures and reports application errors and exceptions with full stack traces.
- Distributed Tracing — Supports end-to-end tracing across microservices and distributed systems.
- Framework Integration — Works with popular Go web frameworks and libraries like Fiber, Gin, and Echo.
- Low Overhead — Designed to have minimal impact on application performance during monitoring.
Philosophy
The agent is built to provide comprehensive observability with minimal code changes, following Elastic's philosophy of making application performance monitoring accessible and actionable for developers.
Use Cases
Best For
- Monitoring performance of Go microservices and distributed systems
- Tracing database queries and external API calls in Go applications
- Tracking and debugging errors in production Go services
- Integrating application performance monitoring with the Elastic Stack
- Getting detailed latency breakdowns for HTTP requests in Go web applications
- Migrating from other APM solutions to Elastic's observability platform
Not Ideal For
- Projects seeking active feature development and regular updates, as this agent is in maintenance mode with no new features planned.
- Teams preferring vendor-agnostic, standards-based observability solutions like OpenTelemetry, which is now recommended by Elastic for new development.
- Applications using Go frameworks or technologies not explicitly supported in the documentation, limiting compatibility.
- Small-scale deployments or proof-of-concepts where the overhead of running an Elastic APM Server might be disproportionate.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Seamlessly integrates with Elastic APM Server and Kibana, providing a unified monitoring experience within the Elastic Stack. The agent is maintained by Elastic, ensuring compatibility with their ecosystem.
Traces HTTP requests, database queries, and external calls, offering detailed performance insights and error tracking with full stack traces. This helps in identifying bottlenecks and debugging issues efficiently.
Engineered to have minimal impact on application performance, as stated in the key features, allowing monitoring without significant degradation in production environments.
Supports popular Go web frameworks like Gin, Fiber, and Echo, enabling easy integration with existing codebases and reducing setup effort.
Cons
The agent is in maintenance mode, meaning only bug fixes are applied and no new features will be added. Elastic recommends migrating to OpenTelemetry for future development.
Tightly coupled with Elastic's APM Server and Kibana, making it difficult to switch to other monitoring platforms without significant migration efforts.
Requires setting up and managing an Elastic APM Server instance, adding complexity and overhead to the deployment architecture.
Open Source Alternative To
elastic/apmfiber is an open-source alternative to the following products:
Datadog APM (Application Performance Monitoring) is a component of Datadog that provides distributed tracing and performance monitoring for applications.
AppDynamics is an application performance management and IT operations analytics platform that monitors application performance and business metrics.
New Relic is a software analytics platform that provides performance monitoring and observability for applications, infrastructure, and customer experiences.
Frequently Asked Questions
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