Automatic Observability for Dockerized Java Applications

TL;DR

This paper introduces POBS, a novel automated method to enhance the observability of Dockerized Java applications by transforming Docker configurations and injecting modules, significantly improving production monitoring capabilities.

Contribution

The paper presents POBS, a new automated approach for improving observability in Dockerized Java applications through configuration transformations and module injection.

Findings

87% of Docker Java containers can be automatically augmented with better observability.

POBS effectively enhances production system monitoring for containerized applications.

The approach is validated on open-source Java applications with positive results.

Abstract

Docker is a virtualization technique heavily used in the industry to build cloud-based systems. In the context of Docker, a system is said to be observable if engineers can get accurate information about its running state in production. In this paper, we present a novel approach, called POBS, to automatically improve the observability of Dockerized Java applications. POBS is based on automated transformations of Docker configuration files. Our approach injects additional modules in the production application, in order to provide better observability. We evaluate POBS by applying it on open-source Java applications which are containerized with Docker. Our key result is that 148/170 (87%) of Docker Java containers can be automatically augmented with better observability.