Configuring your Spring Boot Actuator endpoints for Apps Manager

The Apps Manager UI supports several production-ready endpoints from Spring Boot Actuator. This topic describes the Actuator endpoints and how you can configure your VMware Tanzu Application Service for VMs (TAS for VMs) app to display data from the endpoints in Apps Manager.

For more information about Spring Boot Actuator, see the Spring Boot Actuator documentation.

ImportantThis feature requires Spring Boot v1.5 or later.

Overview

The Apps Manager integration with Spring Boot does not use the standard Spring Boot Actuators. Instead, it uses a specific set of actuators that are secured using the Space Developer role for the space that the application runs in. Authentication and authorization are automatically delegated to the Cloud Controller and the User Account and Authentication server without any configuration from the user.

By default, actuators are secure and cannot be accessed without explicit configuration by the user, even if Spring security is not included. This allows users to take advantage of the Spring Boot Apps Manager integration without accidentally exposing their actuators without security.

Actuator endpoints

The table below describes the Spring Boot Actuator endpoints supported by Apps Manager. To integrate these endpoints with Apps Manager, you must first Activate Spring Boot Actuator for Your App.

Endpoint	About
/info	Description: Exposes details about app environment, Git, and build. To send build and Git information to this endpoint, see Configure the Info Actuator. How to use in Apps Manager: See View Build and Git Information for Your App.
/health	Description: Shows health status or detailed health information over a secure connection. Spring Boot Actuator includes the auto-configured health indicators specified in the Auto-configured HealthIndicators section of the Spring Boot documentation. To write custom health indicators, see the Writing custom HealthIndicators section of the Spring Boot documentation. How to use in Apps Manager: See View App Health.
/loggers	Description: Lists and allows modification of the levels of the loggers in an app. How to use in Apps Manager: See Manage Log Levels.
/dump	Description: Generates a thread dump. How to use in Apps Manager: See View Thread Dump.
/trace	Description: Displays trace information from your app for each of the last 100 HTTP requests. For more information, see the Tracing section of the Spring Boot documentation. How to use in Apps Manager: See View Request Traces.
/heapdump	Description: Generates a heap dump and provides a compressed file containing the results. How to use in Apps Manager: See Download Heap Dump.
/mappings	Description: Displays the endpoints an app serves and other related details. How to use in Apps Manager: See View Mappings.

Activate Spring Boot actuator for your app

You must add a spring-boot-starter-actuator dependency to your app project for the production-ready HTTP endpoints to return values. For more information, see the Enabling production-ready features section of the Spring Boot documentation.

1. Follow the instructions below that correspond to your project type.

   • Maven: If you use Maven, add the following to your project:

     <dependencies>
         <dependency>
             <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
             <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
         </dependency>
     </dependencies>
     

   • Gradle: If you use Gradle, add the following to your project:

     dependencies {
         compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator")
     }
     

2. If you use self-signed certificates in your Operations Manager deployment for UAA or the Cloud Controller, specify in your application.properties file to skip SSL validation:

   management.cloudfoundry.skip-ssl-validation=true
   

For more information, see Cloud Foundry support in the Spring Boot Actuator documentation.

Configure the Info Actuator

The /info endpoint provides information about the project build for your app, and its Git details.

Add build information

To add build information to the /info endpoint, follow the instructions below that correspond to your project type.

Maven

Add the following to your app project:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.4.2.RELEASE</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>build-info</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

Gradle

Add the following to your app project:

springBoot  {
    buildInfo()
}

Add Git information

To add Git information to the /info endpoint, follow these instructions:

1. Add the following property to your application.properties file:

   management.info.git.mode=full
   

2. Follow the instructions below that correspond to your project type.

Maven

Add the following plug-in to your project:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>pl.project13.maven</groupId>
            <artifactId>git-commit-id-plugin</artifactId>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

Gradle

Add the following plug-in to your project:

plugins {
    id "com.gorylenko.gradle-git-properties" version "1.4.17"
}