Exploring New Relic for Application Performance

Mar 9, 2025

New Relic Demo and Application Performance Management (APM)

Introduction

  • Presenter: DevOps Technologist from Bangalore with a background in software engineering.
  • Specializes in Application Performance Management (APM) using both enterprise and open-source tools.
  • Work experience with tools such as Datadog, AppDynamics, New Relic, Prometheus, Grafana, and more.
  • Experience in container technologies like Docker, Cloud Foundry, Kubernetes.
  • Skilled in setting up applications in AWS for various domains including insurance, banking, and media.

Course Objective

  • To explore New Relic, a comprehensive observability platform for real-time insights into application and infrastructure health.
  • Topics: Monitoring, troubleshooting, alerting, reporting, and analysis.
  • Target Audience: Developers, IT professionals, business owners.

Key Topics

Introduction to Application Performance Management (APM)

  • APM involves monitoring and managing software application performance and availability.
  • Key Metrics: Response time, throughput, error rates.
  • Translates IT metrics into business meanings (e.g., transactions in e-commerce applications).
  • Tools like New Relic help reduce errors and trigger alerts based on thresholds.

Introduction to New Relic

  • New Relic is a cloud-based analytics company founded in 2008.
  • Provides various products for monitoring and optimizing software applications.
    • Application Performance Monitoring (APM)
    • Infrastructure Monitoring
    • Browser and Synthetic Monitoring
    • Mobile Monitoring
    • Log Management
  • Allows for real-time performance insights and identifying potential issues before they impact users.

Setting Up New Relic

  • Easy setup via New Relic website (free trial or paid subscription).
  • Different types of agents for infrastructure and application monitoring.
  • Agents collect metrics and send them to New Relic for analysis.
  • Custom dashboards and alerts can be created based on metrics collected.

Monitoring with New Relic

  • Provides real-time visibility into application and infrastructure health.
  • Monitor response times, error rates, throughput, CPU, memory, disk utilization, etc.
  • AWS resource monitoring via CloudWatch integration.

Troubleshooting with New Relic

  • Analyze performance issues using metrics like response time and error rates.
  • Identify bottlenecks and inefficient database queries.
  • Use transaction traces for root cause analysis.

Alerts and Notifications

  • Configure alerts based on various metrics (e.g., CPU utilization thresholds).
  • Notification channels include email, Slack, SMS, and PagerDuty.
  • Escalation policies ensure timely response to issues.

Reporting and Analysis

  • Generate reports and analyze trends to identify areas for improvement.
  • Create custom dashboards based on specific needs.
  • Monitor user engagement and satisfaction.

Conclusion

  • New Relic provides comprehensive monitoring and analysis tools for ensuring system reliability and performance.
  • Encourages proactive performance monitoring and collaboration among teams.
  • The course explores setting up and using New Relic effectively with Mind Magics.

Lab Setup Requirements

  • Basic proficiency in Windows UI, Linux, Docker, and Git.
  • System requirements for running New Relic agents on Windows and Linux.
  • Documentation and resources available on New Relic's website.

Certification and Mock Interviews

  • New Relic offers certifications for performance professionals and engineers.
  • Mock interview questions help prepare for real-world application of New Relic skills.