FrankenPHP support

FrankenPHP is an emerging modern PHP runtime that differs significantly from the traditional PHP-FPM execution model currently supported by Instana.

Unlike PHP-FPM, FrankenPHP uses a long-running worker model (built on Caddy), where application state and memory persist across multiple requests. This architectural difference introduces observability gaps when using Instana’s current PHP tracing capabilities, which are optimized for stateless, request-per-process execution.

Problem Statement

• Current Instana PHP monitoring assumes PHP-FPM behavior and does not account for persistent workers.

• Request traces may not accurately reflect worker reuse, memory growth, or state leakage across requests.

• Limited visibility into worker-level metrics such as lifecycle, utilization, and memory trends.

• Potential issues like memory leaks or shared state between requests cannot be detected effectively.

Proposed Enhancement

Introduce native support or enhanced instrumentation for FrankenPHP, including:

• Worker-aware tracing:

  • Track request execution within long-lived workers

  • Correlate multiple requests handled by the same worker

• Worker-level metrics:

  • Memory usage over time per worker

  • Requests handled per worker

  • Worker lifecycle (start, reuse, restart)

• Persistent state detection:

  • Identify potential state leakage across requests

  • Highlight risks in frameworks using dependency containers (e.g., Laravel, Symfony)

• Integration with modern PHP frameworks:

  • Improved visibility for Laravel Octane and Symfony Runtime when running on FrankenPHP