For monitoring the performance of applications New Relic is the gold standard for synthetic monitoring. New Relic provides you with easy setup and management of the synthetic monitor. It allows one to keep tabs on the app’s performance from anywhere in the world and on any scale. When issues are quickly identified and rectified, keeping your application up and performing at optimum levels is considerably less hassle.
How to add a Synthetic Monitor?
To start with first we need to add our synthetic monitor.
- First, to add a monitor, go to one.newrelic.com > All capabilities > Synthetic Monitoring. (If you have an EU-based account, go to one.eu.newrelic.com.) Click Create monitor.
- Second, select a particular monitor type and fill in all the required tabs.
- Third, we can add tags, change the period, or select a different runtime version. For ping and simple browser monitors, we can add a validation string.
- Fourth, select the locations from where we want our monitor to run. We recommend choosing at least three locations to avoid false positives.
- Depending on the monitor type, you’ll be prompted to either Save the monitor, Validate, or Write the script.
- View your results as they’re received on the summary page.
What are the different response validations?
We can use the advanced options to enable substring monitoring for the following types of response validations:
- Verify SSL
This option verifies the validity of the SSL certificate chain. It can be duplicated by running some specific syntax.
- Bypass HEAD request
This option skips the default HEAD request and instead uses the GET verb with a ping check. GET requests will always happen if the HEAD request fails.
- Redirect is Failure
If a redirect result occurs when Redirect is Failure is enabled, the synthetic monitors categorise it as a failure rather than following the redirect and checking the resulting URL.
Why is it crucial in the latest web design?
In modern web infrastructures, synthetic monitoring is crucial. Envision has a constant watchdog which ensures online services are running well. Moreover, synthetic monitoring offers invaluable information about the actual user experience. Furthermore, to keep providing the high level of service customers have come to expect. However, it identifies possible bottlenecks and difficulties before the customers experience them. The monitor contributes to preserving a premium user experience.
How to set up synthetic monitors for proactive monitoring?
Synthetic monitors are more than just ping monitors. Synthetics can perform scriptable checks on the customer-facing or internal apps, down to the HTTP headers.
This lets us:
- Expand your browser monitoring with real, Selenium-powered scripted browsers, which test login procedures, searches, and other critical business transactions.
- Run an API test to check certificates or make sure any kind of HTTP requests are completed.
- Get extended use case coverage with additional Node modules for your scripted API monitors.
- Easily diagnose whether an issue stems from the network or AWS location, a slow third-party resource, or the health of your backend services or infrastructure.
What are the steps to set up?
Setting up a synthetic monitor in New Relic requires a few steps.
- Accessing Synthetic Monitoring
New Relic’s synthetic monitors act as a vigilant guardian for our website by constantly checking its performance. Here, we can seek a resource statistics:
- First, navigate to the New Relic UI by visiting “One.newrelic.com.”
- Second, sign in with the New Relic account credentials.
- From the top navigation menu, select “Synthetics.”
- Creating a New Monitor
Click on the “Create a monitor” button to start setting up a new monitor.
- Selecting Monitor Type
Choose the type of monitor one wants to create based on the monitoring requirements.
- Configuring the Monitor
To effectively set up Synthetic Monitoring in New Relic, one needs to follow the steps below for each monitor type:
- Ping Monitor:
- Enter the URL or IP address for availability monitoring, such as your website’s homepage or an essential API endpoint.
- Choose whether to follow redirects based on your monitoring needs.
- Define alert thresholds for response time and availability to receive timely notifications.
- Simple Browser Monitor:
- Enter the URL of the page to load in the browser for monitoring, such as a crucial landing page or key user workflow.
- Specify any required headers or parameters for the page load, if applicable.
- Set the time limit for page load and configure alert thresholds for load time and error rates.
- Scripted Browser Monitor:
- Write a JavaScript script to simulate user interactions, navigate pages, interact with elements, and validate responses.
- Utilize the New Relic script editor with syntax highlighting and error checking for robust scripts.
- Thoroughly test the script to ensure accurate user behavior’s representation.
