Effectively using New Relic for monitoring your technology stack can be a superpower, but many organizations stumble into common pitfalls. Overlooking key configuration settings, misinterpreting data, and failing to proactively address alerts can lead to wasted resources and missed opportunities for improvement. Could your organization be leaving valuable insights on the table?
Key Takeaways
- Configure New Relic’s alerting system to notify the correct teams based on severity and component, reducing alert fatigue.
- Customize dashboards with specific metrics relevant to your application’s performance, like average response time and error rates, for at-a-glance insights.
- Regularly review and adjust your New Relic configuration, including data retention policies and user access controls, to align with your evolving business needs.
Ignoring the Alerting System
One of the most frequent mistakes I see with New Relic deployments is a poorly configured alerting system. Many teams simply enable the default alerts and then get overwhelmed by a constant stream of notifications, most of which are irrelevant or non-critical. The result? Alert fatigue and a tendency to ignore everything, even when a real problem arises. I had a client last year who experienced major downtime simply because the on-call engineer had muted New Relic alerts after a week of incessant, meaningless notifications.
Instead, take the time to customize your alerts based on specific thresholds and conditions that are meaningful for your application. This includes setting appropriate severity levels (e.g., warning, critical) and routing alerts to the correct teams. For example, a CPU spike on a database server should go to the database team, not the front-end developers. New Relic’s Alerts feature allows for granular control over notification channels and conditions.
Neglecting Custom Dashboards
New Relic provides a wealth of data out of the box, but the default dashboards are rarely tailored to the specific needs of your application. Teams often fail to create custom dashboards that highlight the metrics that matter most to their business. This makes it difficult to quickly identify performance bottlenecks and understand the impact of code changes.
Think about the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are most important to your organization. Are you concerned about average response time, error rates, or transaction throughput? Create dashboards that prominently display these metrics and allow you to drill down into the underlying data. For instance, if you run an e-commerce site, a dashboard showing conversion rates, average order value, and checkout completion times would be invaluable. Don’t just look at aggregate numbers either. Segment your data. Look at performance for users in Midtown Atlanta versus users in Savannah. It’s likely that the experience differs.
Insufficiently Tagging Transactions
Properly tagging transactions is crucial for understanding the performance of your application and identifying the root cause of problems. Without adequate tagging, it can be difficult to correlate performance data with specific user actions, code modules, or external services.
Use New Relic’s Transactions feature to tag transactions with relevant metadata, such as user IDs, product IDs, or request parameters. This will allow you to filter and group transactions based on these tags, making it easier to identify patterns and anomalies. For example, if you notice a sudden spike in error rates for a particular product, you can use transaction tags to quickly identify the affected users and investigate the underlying cause. We ran into this exact issue at my previous firm. A client who ran an online learning platform noticed slow performance on course completion. By tagging transactions with course IDs, we were able to pinpoint a specific course that was causing database contention due to a poorly optimized query. After fixing the query, course completion times improved by 40%, according to our New Relic dashboards.
To really boost performance, focus on identifying the most impactful bottlenecks. This targeted approach can lead to significant improvements.
Failing to Monitor External Services
Modern applications often rely on a variety of external services, such as databases, message queues, and third-party APIs. It’s essential to monitor the performance of these services to ensure that they are not impacting the overall performance of your application. This is where New Relic shines.
Use New Relic’s external services monitoring capabilities to track the response times, error rates, and availability of your external dependencies. This will help you identify bottlenecks and proactively address issues before they impact your users. For example, if you rely on a third-party payment gateway, you should monitor its response times and error rates to ensure that it is not causing delays or failures during the checkout process. Don’t just monitor the aggregate either. Segment the data by region. You might find that the payment gateway performs well in North America, but has issues in Europe.
Ignoring Data Retention Policies
New Relic stores a vast amount of data, but it’s important to understand your data retention policies and ensure that you are not exceeding your storage limits. Over time, your New Relic account can accumulate a significant amount of historical data, which can impact performance and increase costs. Many companies ignore this aspect entirely.
Review your New Relic data retention policies and configure them to align with your business needs. Consider archiving or deleting older data that is no longer relevant. New Relic allows you to configure different retention policies for different types of data, so you can prioritize the data that is most important to you. According to New Relic’s documentation, you can adjust retention settings for specific event types and metrics.
Neglecting User Access Controls
Properly managing user access controls is crucial for security and compliance. Granting excessive permissions to users can increase the risk of data breaches and unauthorized access to sensitive information. What’s the bare minimum access each user needs to do their job? Start there.
Review your New Relic user access controls and ensure that users only have the permissions they need to perform their job duties. Use role-based access control (RBAC) to simplify user management and enforce consistent security policies. New Relic offers a variety of built-in roles with different levels of access, such as Admin, User, and Read-Only. For example, you might grant the Admin role to a small group of senior engineers and the Read-Only role to business analysts who only need to view data. A Center for Internet Security (CIS) benchmark can provide further guidance on implementing secure access controls.
Avoiding these common mistakes will allow you to get the most out of your New Relic investment and ensure that you are effectively monitoring the performance of your technology stack. A well-configured New Relic instance can be a powerful tool for improving application performance, reducing downtime, and enhancing the overall user experience.
Thinking about tech resource efficiency is also important to maximizing the value of your investment in New Relic, ensuring you get the most out of the platform without overspending.
And if you are a fintech company, code profiling is vital for optimizing code and ensuring peak performance.
Consider implementing tech’s proactive edge to get ahead of potential issues.
How often should I review my New Relic configuration?
I recommend reviewing your New Relic configuration at least quarterly, or more frequently if your application or infrastructure changes significantly. This includes reviewing your alerting rules, dashboards, data retention policies, and user access controls.
What metrics should I monitor in New Relic?
The specific metrics you should monitor will depend on your application and business goals. However, some common metrics to track include average response time, error rates, transaction throughput, CPU utilization, and memory usage.
How can I reduce alert fatigue in New Relic?
To reduce alert fatigue, customize your alerts based on specific thresholds and conditions that are meaningful for your application. Set appropriate severity levels and route alerts to the correct teams. Consider using anomaly detection to identify unusual behavior that may indicate a problem.
Can New Relic monitor my mobile apps?
Yes, New Relic offers mobile monitoring capabilities that allow you to track the performance and user experience of your mobile apps. This includes tracking crash rates, network performance, and user interactions.
How does New Relic compare to other APM tools?
New Relic is a leading application performance monitoring (APM) tool that offers a wide range of features and integrations. Other popular APM tools include Datadog and Dynatrace. The best tool for your organization will depend on your specific needs and requirements.
Don’t let your New Relic implementation become a data graveyard. Take the time to configure it properly, customize your dashboards, and proactively address alerts. Start by auditing your current alert settings today. A few hours spent now can save you from costly downtime later.
