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Understanding New Relic for Performance Management

Mar 6, 2025

Lecture Notes: Exploring New Relic and Application Performance Management

Introduction

  • Presenter Background

    • Master's degree in software engineering.
    • Works as a DevOps technologist in Bangalore, India.
    • Skilled in Application Performance Management (APM) with both enterprise and open-source tools.
    • Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, and various DevOps tools.

  • Lecture Overview

    • Focus on New Relic as an observability platform.
    • Topics: Monitoring, troubleshooting, alerting, reporting, and analysis.
    • Target audience: Developers, IT professionals, business owners.

Application Performance Management (APM)

  • Definition

    • Monitoring and managing performance and availability of software applications.
    • Ensures applications meet end-user needs by monitoring key metrics.

  • Importance

    • Translates IT metrics into business terms.
    • Example: Analyzing e-commerce transactions from a business perspective.

  • Performance Monitoring

    • Plugins or agents run on host systems to gather logs, traces, metrics, and events.
    • Example metrics: CPU utilization, SQL statement tracking.

Introduction to New Relic

  • Company Overview

    • Cloud-based software analytics company founded in 2008.
    • Provides solutions for monitoring, observability, and optimization.

  • Core Products

    • Application Performance Monitoring (APM)
    • Infrastructure monitoring
    • Browser and mobile monitoring
    • Synthetic monitoring
    • Log management

Setting Up New Relic

  • Process Overview

    • Register for a free trial or paid subscription.
    • Download and install appropriate agents on host systems.
    • Configure agents to gather necessary metrics.

  • Agent Types

    • Infrastructure agents for server metrics.
    • APM agents for application-level metrics.

Monitoring with New Relic

  • Key Features
    • Real-time visibility into application performance and infrastructure health.
    • Metrics include response time, error rates, throughput, CPU, and memory usage.

Troubleshooting with New Relic

  • Analyzing Performance Issues

    • Use metrics like response time and error rates to identify bottlenecks.
    • Drill down into transaction traces and database queries.

  • Error Analysis

    • Monitor error rates and analyze stack traces.
    • Set alerts for recurring issues.

Alerts and Notifications

  • Configuring Alerts

    • Set thresholds for key metrics (e.g., CPU utilization).
    • Configure notification channels (e.g., email, Slack, PagerDuty).

  • Escalation Policies

    • Define policies to escalate unresolved alerts.

Reporting and Analysis

  • Custom Dashboards

    • Create dashboards to monitor specific metrics and visualize trends.

  • Trend Analysis

    • Track performance over time to identify improvement areas.

Conclusion

  • Effective Use Tips

    • Set up alerts, create custom dashboards, monitor critical transactions.
    • Collaborate with teams and stay updated on New Relic features.

  • Best Practices

    • Proactive monitoring, quick issue diagnosis, cross-team collaboration.

Lab Setup and Projects

  • System Requirements

    • Windows/Linux with specific hardware requirements.

  • Projects

    • Java application monitoring, error monitoring, log monitoring.

Resources and Certification

  • Additional Resources

    • New Relic documentation for setup and features.

  • Certifications

    • New Relic offers various certifications post-course completion.

Full transcript