What is Spring Boot Actuator, and how do you use it?

Spring Boot Actuator is a set of production-ready features that help you monitor and manage your Spring Boot application. It provides built-in endpoints for monitoring application health, metrics, logging, and more.

• Key features:
  • Health checks: Provides a /actuator/health endpoint to check the health status of your application.
  • Metrics: Offers /actuator/metrics to view application performance metrics like memory usage, request count, etc.
  • Auditing: Tracks and logs application activities for auditing purposes.
  • Environment properties: Exposes environment-related information through /actuator/env.
• Usage:
  • Add the spring-boot-starter-actuator dependency in your pom.xml or build.gradle.
  • Enable or disable specific endpoints in application.properties (e.g., management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=* to expose all endpoints).
  • Access the endpoints via HTTP, JMX, or via the command line for insights into your application’s health and performance.

In summary, Spring Boot Actuator is essential for managing and monitoring production-grade applications, offering powerful built-in endpoints for system health and metrics.