Step-by-Step Guide to Install and Configure Apache SkyWalking for APM

Concept and Architecture

SkyWalking is an open‑source APM platform designed for cloud‑native, container‑based distributed systems. It monitors services, service instances and endpoints, and provides topology, metrics and alarm rules.

SkyWalking allows users to understand the topology relationship between Services and Endpoints, to view the metrics of every Service/Service Instance/Endpoint and to set alarm rules.

Architecture

SkyWalking consists of four logical components: Probes (agents), Platform backend, Storage and UI.

Agents collect data and report to the backend, which processes and stores it; the UI visualizes the data.

Download and Installation

SkyWalking offers an Elasticsearch‑based version and a non‑ES version. To use Elasticsearch as storage, download the ES version from the official site.

Download links:

https://skywalking.apache.org/downloads/

https://archive.apache.org/dist/skywalking/

Directory layout:

agent – copy to each service machine as probe

bin – service startup scripts

config – configuration files

oap‑libs – JARs required by the OAP service

webapp – JARs required by the web UI

Supported storage back‑ends include H2, Elasticsearch 6/7, MySQL, TiDB and InfluxDB. InfluxDB is recommended for time‑series data, but this guide uses Elasticsearch 7.

Install Elasticsearch

Download and extract Elasticsearch 7.x, then start and stop it with:

# start
./bin/elasticsearch -d -p pid
# stop
pkill -F pid

Elasticsearch 7.x requires Java 11+. Adjust system limits:

[1]: max file descriptors [4096] for elasticsearch process is too low, increase to at least [65535]
[2]: max virtual memory areas vm.max_map_count [65530] is too low, increase to at least [262144]
[3]: the default discovery settings are unsuitable for production use; at least one of [discovery.seed_hosts, discovery.seed_providers, cluster.initial_master_nodes] must be configured

Fix by editing /etc/security/limits.conf and /etc/sysctl.conf and updating elasticsearch.yml (set cluster.initial_master_nodes and network.host: 0.0.0.0).

Install Agent

Copy the agent directory to each service host, place optional plugins in plugins, and edit agent/config/agent.config (or use environment variables) to set agent.service_name and collector.backend_service.

agent.service_name=${SW_AGENT_NAME:user-center}
collector.backend_service=${SW_AGENT_COLLECTOR_BACKEND_SERVICES:192.168.100.17:11800}

Start the service with the Java agent:

java -javaagent:/path/to/skywalking-agent/skywalking-agent.jar -jar yourApp.jar

Start Services

Configure webapp/webapp.yml (port, collector address) and launch:

bin/startup.sh
# or
bin/oapService.sh
bin/webappService.sh

Verify logs and access the UI at http://127.0.0.1:8080.

Alert Configuration

Edit alarm-settings.yml to define alarm rules and notifications. The guide shows how to send alerts to DingTalk via a Spring Boot project.

Key files include pom.xml, AlarmMessageDTO, DingTalkAlarmService, and AlarmController with a POST endpoint /skywalking/alarm that forwards messages to DingTalk.

References: official SkyWalking documentation and related URLs.