Checklist

New Relic APM Best Practices

10 Application Monitoring Tips You Need To Know

It’s one thing to know how to use New Relic APM, but it’s another thing to know how to use New Relic’s application performance monitoring
software well. Here are 10 best practices designed to help you become a New Relic APM master—and a key asset to your team!

1 Standardize application-naming conventions mature APM customers use are application name and environment.

Most New Relic agents provide a default application name, such as So, for example, if you wanted to view the billing application in

“My Application” or “PHP Application,” if you don’t specify one in Test, you could simply filter by “billing app” (name label) and
your New Relic configuration file. You don’t want to end up with 20 “test” (environment label).

identically named applications, so always be sure to select a New Relic APM is designed so that account owners and admins
descriptive identifier for your apps as soon you deploy them. can label apps to “roll up” into an unlimited number of meaningful
To keep things consistent and easy to navigate, New Relic recom- categories. You can also easily sort, filter, and page through all
mends standardizing your application naming (e.g. all apps in Staging applications on your account’s Applications list.
append [Staging] or the like at the end of their names.) Ideally,
HOW TO DO IT:
you want your new Java applications to be named automatically
to reduce the chances of typographical errors and misnaming. 1. From the New Relic APM menu bar, select Applications.
2. From the Applications index, select Show Labels > On.
HOW TO DO IT:
3. To assign an app to a category, select the circled plus icon by
1. For Java applications, automatic application naming can come
its name.
from the following sources:
4. Follow the guidelines to type the label; use the format
• Request attribute
Category:Value.
• Servlet init parameter
5. To save the new label, press Enter or Return.
• Filter init parameter
• Web app context parameter
• Web app context name (display name)
• Web app context path

Choose the method that best fits your needs and follow
these steps.

2. For non-Java applications, there are no automatic naming

methods so refer to the documentation for your agent.

2 Add labels to your applications

When several different applications use the same account, and 3 Create and evaluate alert policies
each application spans multiple environments (for example, When key performance indicators spike or drop, individuals and
development, test, pre-production, production), it can be hard to teams in your organization need to be notified. Alerting in New
find a specific application in your overview dashboard. That’s why Relic provides a set of tools including dynamic baselines that allow
we recommend adding labels to your apps so that you can seg- you to detect problems before they impact your end users.
ment them into logical groups. The two most common labels that
New Relic APM Best Practices: 10 Application Monitoring Tips You Need To Know

Alert policies can be set up in two primary ways: 3. Using the threshold sliders, you can then set how closely you

• Static threshold alerts are great when you already know the want your threshold to follow the baseline prediction.

nature of an application and its normal behaviors aren’t

To set up static threshold alerts:
likely to change anytime soon. Apdex score, response time,
1. To change your Apdex settings, go here.
error rate, throughput are some of the static thresholds
you can create alert policies on. 2. To set up your alert notification channels, go here.

• Dynamic baseline alerts make it easy to determine and set 4 Identify and set up key transactions
dynamic alert thresholds for applications with varying
Depending on the nature of your application, some transactions
seasonal patterns and growth trends (which make it difficult
may be more important to you than others. New Relic’s key
to set thresholds that define normal behavior). These alerts
transactions feature is designed to help you closely monitor what
use baselines modeled from your application’s historical
you consider to be your app’s most business-critical transactions—
metric data.
whether that’s end-user or app response time, call counts, error
Each alert policy can contain as many conditions as you need, and rates, or something else. You can also set alert threshold levels
each alert condition includes three components: for notifications when your key transactions are performing poorly.

• Type of condition (metric, external service, and so on) HOW TO DO IT:

• Entities that the policy targets (for example, apps monitored 1. From the New Relic APM or New Relic Browser menu bar,
by New Relic APM or New Relic Browser, hosts monitored select Key transactions, and select Add more. Then select
by New Relic Infrastructure, and so on) the app and web transaction. OR from the selected transac-
• Thresholds that escalate into alerting situations with tion, select Track as key transaction.
increasing severity 2. Type a name for the key transaction, and select Track key
transaction.
Once you have your alerting set up, you then want to make sure
you’re taking advantage of all viable notification channels. After 3. Optional: If the agent for the selected app supports custom

all, what good are alerts if no one knows about them? You can alerting, use the default values that New Relic automatically

manage alerts by creating specific user groups and by leveraging fills, or select Edit key alert transaction policy to set the Apdex

New Relic’s integrated alert channels, including HipChat, JIRA, and alert threshold values.

PagerDuty, Campfire, Webhook, and email. Be sure to evaluate alert 4. To view the key transactions dashboard details, select View
policies on a regular basis to ensure that they are always valid. new key transaction.

HOW TO DO IT:
To set up dynamic baseline alerts: 5 Track deployment history

1. To select the Dynamic Baseline Alerts capability and choose When development teams are pushing new code out as frequently
an application, go here. You will see a preview of the metric as possible, it can be hard to measure the impact that each
with the predicted baseline. deployment is having on performance. One way to stay in tune
with how these changes are affecting your application is via
2. From the drop-down menu, you can select a metric for that
deployment reports. These reports list recent deployments and
application and see the corresponding baseline.
New Relic APM Best Practices: 10 Application Monitoring Tips You Need To Know

their impact on end-users and app servers’ Apdex scores, along HOW TO DO IT:
with response times, throughput, and errors. You can also view 1. Start with the Error rate chart to see at a glance where there
and drill down into the details to catch errors related to recent are unexpected spikes, dips or patterns in general.
deployments, or file a ticket and share details with your team.
2. Correlate general patterns on the Top 5 errors chart to alerts
HOW TO DO IT: occurring during the same time period. Use groups and filters

1. To view the Deployments dashboard, from the New Relic menu to examine the error events and attributes in more detail, and

bar, select APM > (selected app) > Events > Deployments. look for patterns with error messages or transaction names.

2. To view performance after a deployment, go to the selected 3. Explore and share Error trace table information, including

app’s Overview dashboard in the Recent events section. specific stack trace details: associated host, user, framework

Keep in mind that a blue vertical bar on a chart indicates a code, customer attributes, etc.

deployment. To view summary information about the deploy- 4. Identify error patterns on the Error frequency heatmap for a
ment, point to the blue bar. selected grouping (host, error message, custom attributes,
etc) within a time range.
6 Start troubleshooting errors using error analytics
7 Leverage New Relic’s reporting capabilities
The New Relic APM error analytics feature gives you useful tools
to analyze and resolve errors being reported by your applications, From SLA, deployment, and capacity to scalability, host usage
so you can immediately see where to focus your attention. DevOps reports, and more, New Relic APM offers a variety of downloadable
teams can: reporting tools surfacing historical trends—all great ways to report
to senior executive teams or customers. Take a look at the full list
• Assess the health of applications with fine-grained data on
of reports and use them to your advantage.
error events over the past eight days.
• Select any parameter to group or filter errors shown; for HOW TO DO IT:
example, error class, error message, host, transaction 1. To view a report, from the New Relic APM menu bar, select
name, etc. Applications > (selected app) > Reports.
• Drill down into stack trace details to diagnose and resolve 2. Select the report you’d like to see.
specific errors.
3. If you want to save or export a report to share, select Down-
• Identify continuing trends in error rates for periods longer load this report as .csv, which will create a report with
than eight days. comma-separated values.
• Use links to share error data through New Relic Insights
8 Look at your environment holistically
dashboards or through your organization’s ticketing
system to coordinate and resolve errors more quickly. With service maps

Use New Relic service maps, a feature included in APM, to understand

how apps and services in your architecture connect and talk to
each other. Service maps are visual, customizable representations
of your application architecture. Maps automatically show you your
app’s connections and dependencies, including databases and external
services. Health indicators and performance metrics show you the
current operational status for every part of your architecture.

HOW TO DO IT:
1. To access service maps, go to rpm.newrelic.com/apm >
Service maps.
2. Name your map.
3. Rearrange, group, or add nodes on the map as needed.
New Relic APM Best Practices: 10 Application Monitoring Tips You Need To Know

With New Relic Insights 9 Keep your agents current

Offering a unified, end-to-end view, New Relic Insights lets you chart With New Relic’s SaaS platform, getting new features is as easy
and query all your APM data, both the metric and event data the as updating your agent. Most likely your organization already
agent reports, alongside data any other New Relic agents report. has a set of scripts for deploying application upgrades into your
It’s all available in Insights out-of-the-box, from the time any of environment. In a similar fashion, you can also automate your
the agents, including APM, start reporting data to New Relic. You New Relic agent deployment to ensure that your systems are up
can extend your reported event data, with custom attributes and to date. Both Puppet and Chef scripts are great examples of
custom events for even more dimension to segment your data. deployment frameworks that make life easier by allowing you to
You can also send third-party data to Insights. automate your entire deployment and management process.

Use the data explorer to quickly browse your data taxonomy and HOW TO DO IT:
add-to-insights to start adding charts from New Relic APM to a
1. Regularly review which version of the agent you’re using so that
custom dashboard with a few clicks.
you know when an update is needed. If the latest agent release
During an incident, open Insights and quickly ask a series of ques- contains a needed fix or added functionality, download it.
tions about your system with the New Relic Query Language
2. To deploy the agent manually:
(NRQL). For example, you can:
• Back up the current agent directory.
• Show web and mobile application information, server
• Deploy the updated agent into the existing agent directory.
information, custom metric data, and plugin metric data
all on a single dashboard interface. • Modify configuration files by comparing new files with
existing files. In particular, make sure things like license
• Create dashboards that present charts and tables with a
key and custom extensions are copied over to the new
uniform size and arrangement on a grid.
configuration.
• Select existing New Relic charts for your dashboard, or
• Restart the application.
create your own charts and tables.
• If problems arise, restore the old agent using the backup
HOW TO DO IT: and restart.

1. From the New Relic menu bar, select Dashboards > Create 3. To deploy the agent automatically (preferred as a method to
Insights dashboard. avoid errors), you can either:
2. Type the dashboard’s title, or keep the default name. • Use existing deployment scripts, provided by they can be
3. Optional: To create a dashboard with the selected application adapted to handle the deployment.
data only, select the Legacy mode checkbox. • Create and maintain a script that specifically deploys and
4. Select the layout (Overview or Grid), and select Create. configures the New Relic agent. Ideally, the script would
5. Reuse this user flow to add additional charts, tables, and data pull the agent files from a repository where the files are
to your dashboard. versioned (for rollback purposes). Once the script has
been created:
a. Shut down the application (unless script handles this).
b. Run the deployment script.
c. Start the application (unless script handles this).
d. If problems arise, run the script to roll back to the
previous version.
New Relic APM Best Practices: 10 Application Monitoring Tips You Need To Know

10 Enable role-based access (RBAC) and 3. To upload your SAML Identity Provider certificate, select
single sign-on (SSO) Choose File, and then follow standard procedures to select

Security is no doubt of utmost concern to your organization. To and save the file.

simplify password management for your employees and strengthen 4. Copy and paste in (or type) the Remove login URL that your
security, you may already be using SSO with your other systems. users will use for Single Sign-On.
You should do the same with New Relic. Using New Relic’s SSO 5. If your organization’s SAML integration provides a redirect
integration feature, account administrators will be able to enforce URL for logout, copy and paste in (or type) the Logout
strong passwords and restrict login via a corporate authentication landing URL; otherwise leave blank.
mechanism. This way, New Relic users who have already authen-
6. Save, test, and enable.
ticated using a corporate SSO system will be able to bypass the
New Relic login prompt.

HOW TO DO IT:
1. Log in to New Relic as an admin and go to the SSO configu-
ration page. From the New Relic title bar, select (your account
name) > Account Settings > Integrations > Single Sign On.
2. From the SAML Single Sign On page, review your New Relic
SAML Service Provider details.

Want more user tips?

• View training videos at New Relic University.
• Read the documentation.
• Check out our Tutorials page.
• Ask a question in the New Relic Online Technical Community.

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