Application monitoring plays a critical role in IT operations, as it helps identify and address issues that can cause applications to stop working. While the initial assumption may be that the problem lies within the applications themselves, it is often the case that the root cause of the issue lies elsewhere within the IT system. Therefore, comprehensive monitoring is essential to investigate and resolve any problems that arise. People often are puzzled about why monitoring application is important, in this article all the complete answers related to monitoring application is hidden.
Why Monitoring Your Application Is Important:
There are two primary benefits to application monitoring:
1. Head off performance issues:
By monitoring applications, IT teams can identify and address performance issues before they impact users. Problems with application performance often develop gradually over time rather than appearing suddenly. For example, a sudden drop in application performance may be due to a service problem that has been building over time, such as a lack of storage space on a server. By implementing a monitoring system capable of root cause analysis, IT teams can track and investigate the underlying causes of performance issues and this is why monitoring your application is important.
2. Identify system dependencies:
Applications rely on the smooth operation of supporting services and hardware. Consequently, if an application stops working, it is necessary to investigate the entire IT system to determine the cause and one of the causes why monitoring your application is important. Application monitoring helps identify and map the dependencies within the system, highlighting the interconnected relationships between applications, servers, and other resources. This enables IT teams to better understand the underlying architecture and efficiently troubleshoot any problems that arise.
3. Application monitoring obligations
Applications serve a variety of users, including individuals within the organization, external businesses, and members of the public. When an application fails to perform as expected, it not only disappoints users but can also have financial implications if the application delivery is subject to a service level agreement (SLA). Poor application performance not only incurs immediate financial costs but can also lead to long-term reputational damage for the business. Therefore, meeting the expectations outlined in SLAs and ensuring consistent availability during business hours is crucial for maintaining customer satisfaction.
4. Application monitoring delivery models
To effectively monitor applications, a centralized approach is necessary. This eliminates the need for technicians to log into each server individually to check application activities. Furthermore, if applications are intended for use by external users, such as customers or partners, an application monitoring system that can access services over the Internet is more accurate in modelling real-world working conditions.
Application monitoring can be hosted either on-premises or in the cloud. The fundamental operational principles of on-site and cloud-based monitoring systems are similar since both rely on data transmission across networks. However, a cloud-based monitoring system offers the advantage of monitoring services from a broader perspective, including external elements, such as cloud-based modules. Similarly, a self-hosted monitoring system must have the capability to monitor remote and cloud-based modules.
5. Application dependency mapping
Merely listing applications in a monitoring tool’s interface is insufficient for adequate monitoring in today’s complex IT environments. The inclusion of an autodiscovery function has become essential as it enables monitoring tools to set themselves up and identify applications and services that may otherwise go unnoticed. If you want to know more about it you can get help from our mobile app development services.
Applications consist of layers interconnected through links to other applications and rely on server resources. For example, consider a website that includes advertising delivered through a content delivery network (CDN). In this case, the CDN becomes a service that affects the website’s load times, highlighting the importance of monitoring this aspect. Furthermore, if the website is built using WordPress and includes plug-in services, such as a shopping cart, additional components must be monitored. Additionally, the website may be reliant on a database and a web server application. Tracking and mapping these interconnected modules, servers, and resources allows for a comprehensive understanding of the application’s dependencies and potential causes of performance issues.
6. Microservices and mobile offloading
Mobile applications often rely on microservices, which are serverless systems that perform specific functions. These microservices can be developed in-house, outsourced to a web application consultancy, or sourced from third-party providers. Monitoring these microservices is crucial, and understanding their role within the overall system architecture is essential.
Development toolkits simplify the creation of web applications by providing pre-built functionality such as drag-and-drop elements and picklist management. These functions are triggered each time a user interacts with the application, and monitoring them becomes critical. Tracing, mapping, and monitoring these functions within microservices are essential for understanding their impact on overall application performance.
7. Distributed tracing and code profiling
Monitoring third-party microservices can be challenging since they may not generate log messages. In such cases, it becomes challenging to extract monitoring data from these systems. However, as many web systems are written in plain-text programming languages, monitoring tools can scan the code as it passes from the web server to the web browser. This technique, known as code profiling, has become increasingly important for effective application monitoring.
Telemetry systems offer a solution by integrating messaging into serverless systems that comply with industry standards. These messages can be picked up by monitoring tools known as distributed tracing services. By combining code profiling and distributed tracing, IT teams can effectively monitor third-party microservices and gain insights into their potential impact on application performance. Additionally, application dependency mapping allows for the identification and understanding of the location and contributions of these systems within the broader application ecosystem.
8. Application performance monitoring systems
To successfully monitor applications, automation is essential. Manually monitoring every module is impractical and inefficient, especially considering that modules often run simultaneously and interact with numerous other modules. Automated application monitoring tools provide continuous and consistent performance tracking.
An effective monitoring tool should be capable of generating and maintaining an application dependency map, saving time and effort for IT teams. Additionally, a tool with hybrid monitoring capabilities is ideal, as it can cater to a variety of monitoring requirements, regardless of the hosting model or system architecture in place.
Tips For Choosing An Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Tool:
When selecting an APM tool to implement your organization’s APM strategies, it is important to consider certain capabilities. Here are some tips to help you choose the right tool:
1. Opt for a tool that provides comprehensive performance monitoring across all layers of your application, including the code and transaction levels.
2. Ensure that the APM tool supports the programming languages and platforms used in your organization’s applications.
3. Look for a tool that can efficiently collect data without impacting the performance of your application. It should support all layers of the application stack.
4. User experience monitoring and diagnostics should be included in the APM tool’s capabilities.
5. The APM tool should be capable of monitoring applications across on-premises, cloud-based, and hybrid environments.
6. The tool should facilitate effective traceability, diagnostics, root cause analysis, and issue resolution.
7. Consider choosing an APM tool that incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced analytics to provide deeper insights into the collected data.
8. It is important for the APM tool to seamlessly integrate with third-party tools and technologies.
9. Look for an APM tool that offers advanced alerting and notification capabilities, which can be easily customized, and supports anomalous behaviour detection.
10. The tool should have extensive reporting and visualization capabilities that make it easy to understand and take action based on the collected data.
11. Ensure that the APM tool is simple to implement and use, and provides reliable technical support.
12. Consider choosing a cost-effective APM tool that can help reduce overall application maintenance costs.
13. You can get help from our mobile application development services.
In addition to these capabilities:
there are other general characteristics to consider. Ask yourself the following questions:
1. Is the APM tool offered as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution, or can it be implemented on-premises or on a cloud-based platform?
2. Does the tool rely solely on client agents to gather performance data, or does it also support agentless data collection?
Lastly, it is important to evaluate the scalability of the APM tool and the security mechanisms in place to protect your data.
The Best Application Monitoring Systems:
We have identified top-notch application monitoring services that stay up-to-date with the latest technology and offer predictive warnings to prevent disasters.
1. AppDynamics APM: Comprehensive Observability Platform
AppDynamics, part of Cisco, offers a powerful APM solution that provides end-to-end visibility into application performance. This full-stack observability platform can analyze applications at the code execution level, measure business transaction performance, monitor application and infrastructure health, and automatically discover application topology. With AppDynamics APM, you can troubleshoot application errors and receive real-time alerts based on custom or built-in health rules.
2. Datadog APM: SaaS-based Observability with Distributed Tracing
Datadog is a SaaS-based observability platform that includes strong APM capabilities. Their APM solution offers end-to-end distributed tracing, allowing you to monitor health metrics and service dependencies across browsers, mobile apps, databases, and individual lines of code. With Datadog APM, you can gain visibility into your entire continuous integration environment, monitor profile aggregations, and use machine learning analytics to automatically detect errors and latency outliers.
3. Dynatrace: Intelligent Observability at Scale
Dynatrace is a cloud-based observability platform that provides advanced APM capabilities for both enterprise applications and cloud-native workloads. With Dynatrace, you can monitor a wide range of environments, including cloud, VMs, containers, and mobile apps. Their AI causation engine and automation features provide deep insights into your applications and underlying infrastructure. Dynatrace also offers monitoring capabilities for message queues and databases.
4. Instana: Automated APM for Application and Service Monitoring
Instana, an IBM company, offers an Enterprise Observability Platform and an Application Performance Monitoring platform. Their APM solution includes fully automated capabilities to observe, monitor, and fix applications and services. Instana uses real-time stream processing to collect and analyze data, providing immediate feedback with every release, deployment, and version. With Instana, you can discover and map application dependencies, view real-time entity relationship models, and analyze trace and profiler data to identify bottlenecks.
5. Gibraltar Software Loupe: Log Aggregation and Analytics Platform
Loupe is a log aggregation and analytics platform that enables organizations to gather data about .NET and Java applications from various environments. In addition to log data, Loupe can gather system metrics and framework-specific events. With Loupe, you can view details leading up to exceptions, analyze log data to resolve errors, and track hardware and operating system details. It also allows you to set up alerts for error notifications.
6. ManageEngine Applications Manager: APM with Infrastructure Monitoring
Applications Manager is an APM software product that offers visibility into application performance and user experience, along with infrastructure monitoring. This platform supports multiple programming languages, including Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby, and Node.js. With Applications Manager, you can troubleshoot issues across different environments, monitor front-end performance, and view real-time dependency maps. It also provides more than 500 pre-built reports and interactive dashboards for data visualization.
7. New Relic APM: SaaS-based Observability with Dependency Tracing
New Relic is a SaaS-based observability platform that includes APM as one of its main services. This platform allows you to trace dependencies across distributed applications, detect anomalies, optimize performance, and improve the customer experience. With New Relic APM, you can drill into errors and slow traces, create alerts for specific metrics, and track deployment markers. It also offers integrations with leading languages, frameworks, and cloud providers.
8. Raygun APM: Server-side Performance Monitoring Made Easy
Raygun APM is a SaaS-based platform that provides trend and real-time application and user experience data. It supports .NET, Ruby, and Node.js applications and proactively identifies and alerts customers to performance issues. Raygun APM includes features such as performance data visualization, custom rule configuration for issue detection, code-level diagnostics, and trace analysis. It also monitors the effect of optimizations applied to an application.
9. Scout APM: Proactive Performance Monitoring and Insights
Scout APM is a performance monitoring platform that offers proactive alerting and real-time insights into the application environment. This SaaS-based platform provides error, database, external service monitoring, and basic application monitoring. Scout APM includes features like deployment tracking, GitHub integration, and background job monitoring. It allows you to view performance and resource usage, drill into transaction traces, and configure alerts for individual endpoints and background jobs.
10. Site24x7 APM Insight: AI-powered Performance Monitoring
APM Insight by Site24x7 is an AI-powered performance monitoring system that tracks application behaviour and its impact on users in real time. This SaaS-based product can monitor the entire application stack, from the URL down to the database. It supports multiple platforms, including Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby, Python, and Node.js. With APM Insight, you can monitor production information, track individual transactions, detect anomalies using the anomaly detection engine, and monitor custom components and metrics.
Conclusion
Application monitoring is critical for identifying and resolving performance issues within IT systems. By implementing comprehensive monitoring strategies, IT teams can effectively troubleshoot problems, prevent performance issues, and meet service-level agreements. Monitoring tools should possess features like autodiscovery, application dependency mapping, code profiling, and distributed tracing to provide accurate and efficient performance tracking that is why monitoring application is important. With automation and centralized monitoring, organizations can ensure the smooth and reliable operation of their applications, protecting their reputation and preventing potential financial losses. For more information, you can get help from Pear Pixel’s mobile application development services.
FAQs
Application monitoring helps identify and address issues that can cause applications to stop working. It is essential for investigating and resolving problems that arise within the IT system.
There are two primary benefits:
- Head off performance issues: By monitoring applications, IT teams can identify and address performance issues before they impact users.
- Identify system dependencies: Application monitoring helps identify and map the dependencies within the system, enabling efficient troubleshooting.
Consider the comprehensive performance monitoring capabilities, support for programming languages and platforms, efficient data collection, user experience monitoring, and compatibility with on-premises, cloud-based, and hybrid environments. Also, look for AI and advanced analytics, integration capabilities, advanced alerting and notification, and extensive reporting and visualization.
Automation is essential for efficient monitoring, and the tool should provide a comprehensive application dependency map. Consider scalability and security mechanisms, as well as the capability to meet your organization’s specific monitoring requirements.