New Relic is a widely used online software solution designed for monitoring and managing the performance of websites and applications. Among its various features, New Relic offers synthetics monitoring, a valuable tool that allows you to simulate user interactions and monitor the performance of your web pages.
New Relic’s synthetics monitoring empowers you with valuable insights into the availability and performance of your web pages, spanning across diverse devices and locations.
This proactive approach enables you to identify and address potential issues, resulting in an improved user experience and the seamless functioning of your web pages.
Aside from synthetics monitoring, New Relic provides a comprehensive range of features and capabilities to help you monitor and optimise your applications and infrastructure. These include real user monitoring, application performance monitoring (APM), infrastructure monitoring, error tracking, and more. By leveraging these tools, you gain deep visibility into your applications’ behaviour and performance, enabling you to identify bottlenecks, troubleshoot issues, and optimise overall performance.
With the valuable data and insights provided by New Relic, you can make informed decisions to enhance user experiences, improve application performance, and ensure the smooth operation of your websites and applications.
If you require specific guidance or assistance on utilising New Relic’s synthetics monitoring or any other features, please feel free to ask.
What is New Relic?
New Relic is a cloud-based application performance management (APM) solution that allows you to monitor the performance of your applications, track their health, and prioritize necessary changes. It offers comprehensive monitoring capabilities to detect any anomalies in the health of your applications. Additionally, New Relic provides Synthetics, an internal service offered to customers.New Relic APM leverages the events collected through Synthetics to evaluate the overall well-being of your applications, taking into account the frequency and severity of these events.
What is Synthetic Monitoring?
Synthetic monitoring refers to the practice of proactively predicting system or service failures and performance deviations. It involves the utilisation of centralised services to monitor performance at a granular level, including events like JVM restarts and application errors.
In the context of New Relic, synthetic monitoring involves the periodic transmission of data from your application to their servers. This data is then analyzed against historical trends to detect any anomalies in the application’s health. By setting up alerts, you can receive notifications when unusual events occur, such as a sudden increase in memory usage or spikes in response time for specific pages within your application. Synthetic monitoring provides a proactive approach to identify potential issues before they significantly impact the performance or user experience of your application.
How to get synthetics monitoring to work in new relic?
To begin utilising synthetic monitoring in New Relic, follow the steps outlined below:
Choose a Synthetic Monitor
- Select a monitor that aligns with your monitoring requirements. Consider using the Nerd Graph API, which provides standard monitoring functionalities such as monitor creation, deletion, and updates through API calls.
- Add the chosen monitor in the New Relic dashboard by navigating to one.newrelic.com.
- Specify the monitor type, fill in the necessary fields, and configure additional settings such as runtime, periods, tags, and advanced options like SSL verification, HEAD request bypass, and Redirect is Failure (applicable for ping monitors).
- Select at least three locations for running the monitor (it’s recommended to choose multiple locations).
- Save the monitor once all the settings are configured.
Summary Page
To view the status of your synthetic monitor, click on its name in the upper-right corner of the summary page.
If an active incident triggers an alert, click on the “critical alert” link associated with the monitor to open it in a new tab.
Manage policies for all monitors, including alert policies, can be accessed from the “manage policies for all monitors” option.
Monitor Results
- The results page provides insights into how your web applications perform.
- You can sort the listed results to identify problem areas or anomalies.
- Filter the results by location to compare the monitor’s performance from different locations.
- To access the results page :
- Go to New Relic and navigate to Synthetics.
- From the Monitors tab, select your monitor.
- Click on Monitor and then Results.
Analysing Resource Load Time
- The synthetic resources page offers a detailed report on how each component of your website contributes to the overall load time.
- It provides information on various resources such as images, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and more.
- You can drill down into runtime metrics, review performance details of third-party resources, and identify HTTP response codes for each resource.
- To access the resource load time information:
- Go to New Relic and navigate to Synthetics.
- From the Monitors dropdown menu, select your monitor.
- Click on Monitor and then Resources.
By following these steps, you can effectively set up and utilise synthetic monitoring in New Relic to gain insights into the performance of your web applications.
FAQ
Q1: What is the purpose of synthetic monitoring?
Ans: Synthetic monitoring helps predict system failures and monitor performance proactively.
Q2: How can I choose a synthetic monitor in New Relic?
Ans: Select a monitor type, configure settings, and save it in the New Relic dashboard.
Q3: Where can I view the status of my synthetic monitor in New Relic?
Ans: Click on the monitor name in the summary page to see its status and alerts.
Q4: How can I analyse the resource load time in synthetic monitoring?
Ans: Access the synthetic resources page to view detailed load time information for each component.
Q5: What does the Nerd Graph API offer for synthetic monitoring in New Relic?
Ans: The Nerd Graph API provides API calls for creating, updating, and deleting synthetic monitors.
