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Why Monitoring Your Application Is Important & Best Practices

Are you frustrated by application performance issues or unexpected downtime? Application performance monitoring (APM) can help! Understanding the importance of monitoring your applications and implementing best practices ensures your systems operate seamlessly. This blog highlights why monitoring your application is essential and provides valuable insights into optimizing your app's performance.

Are you seeking cost-effective strategies to enhance application performance? Alerty’s free APM solution is invaluable in helping you understand the importance of monitoring applications and swiftly implement best practices.

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Table of Contents

What Is Application Performance Monitoring?

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Application Performance Monitoring (APM) refers to managing and monitoring all software application performance and availability. It involves using specialized tools to track and manage your applications’:

  • Performance 
  • Availability

Proactive Problem Detection

APM monitors critical metrics like error rates, resource usage, response times, and user interactions, allowing you to identify and resolve issues before they become significant problems for your users. 

APM only focuses on the border concept of controlling an app’s performance levels. Monitoring is a part of software application management.

Optimizing Performance & User Experience

APM’s primary goal is to ensure that the applications meet the desired performance levels and deliver a satisfactory user experience. APM tools provide insights into how an application performs in real time and help the team identify quickly and troubleshoot any issues that may arise. 

By monitoring key performance indicators, APM helps teams:

  • Detect all the performance
  • Help to optimize application performance
  • Enhance user satisfaction

Application monitoring tools are used to scan your entire network of apps for issues continuously:

  • Speed
  • Usability
  • Security

Application performance monitoring is a proactive process that helps you avoid downtime and other potential problems with business-critical apps.

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Why Monitoring Your Applications Is Important?

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Monitoring applications plays a vital role in ensuring your business's success. Customers must become more demanding. Applications that fail to deliver optimal performance likely lead users to abandon them. 

Ensuring Application Health

Every company that owns or uses an application crucial to its cash flow wants its software to respond to requests as accurately and quickly as possible. Your application's performance can be a testament to its success or failure. 

An application might experience:

  • Major outages
  • Partial outages
  • Intermittent performance issues

Like humans, applications require constant and intelligent monitoring to remain healthy.

Beyond Accuracy

Applications may respond to requests correctly but do so incredibly slowly. This can frustrate users and, ultimately, decrease customer retention. Keeping a close eye on application performance is vital to ensure it meets user expectations. 

This process involves continuously monitoring performance metrics using APM

tools. These tools act as the watchdogs of your digital landscape, constantly scanning for abnormalities. 

Unveiling Performance Issues

By monitoring your application's performance, you can identify:

This information lets decision-makers make well-informed decisions that improve or decrease a company's business performance. Dedicated analysis and monitoring are the best ways to ensure application performance.

Effortless Monitoring, Powerful Results: Try Alerty's Free APM Today

Alerty is a cloud monitoring service for developers and early-stage startups, offering application performance monitoring, database monitoring, and incident management.

Technology Support for Issue Resolution

  • NextJS
  • React
  • Vue
  • Node.js

Database Monitoring by Alerty

  • Supabase
  • PostgreSQL
  • RDS
  • Tracks CPU usage and memory consumption

Alerty features quick incident management and Real User Monitoring (RUM) to optimize the user experience. Its Universal Service Monitoring covers dependencies like Stripe API, OpenAI, and Vercel. 

Alerty: AI-Powered Monitoring Made Easy

  • Simplifies setup with AI
  • Cost-effective compared to competitors
  • Designed for ease of use
  • Integrates with tools like Sentry

Catch issues today before they affect your users with Alerty's free APM solution!

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Benefits of Application Monitoring

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Ensuring Business Continuity

Downtime costs $9000 per minute and can be a nightmare for businesses. It:

  • Disrupts operations
  • Causes losses
  • Tests your crisis response

Managing your application's performance is crucial for maintaining business continuity. This way, you can spot issues before they turn into disasters. 

Maintaining Customer Experience

User satisfaction is the holy grail of digital businesses. If your application is too slow, users will bounce off at the drop of a hat. By monitoring key metrics, you can ensure your digital shopfront is squeaky clean.

Enforcing Security and Mitigating Risks

Hackers love an excellent digital break-in, but with the proper monitoring, you can lock them out. You can protect your data and customers by spotting unwelcome intruders and acting swiftly.

Operational Efficiency

Monitoring applications isn't just about keeping the wheels turning. It's about finding opportunities to:

  • Optimize
  • Grow
  • save costs

By watching metrics, you can:

  • Scale your infrastructure
  • Balance the load
  • Allocate resources like a boss

This proactive approach prevents your system from getting overwhelmed, boosts scalability, and trims the fat from your operating costs.

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Types of Application Monitoring

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Performance Monitoring

Performance monitoring is essential for identifying:

  • Bottlenecks
  • Optimizing code
  • Ensuring efficient resource usage

Measures like response time, throughput, latency, and resource utilization (CPU, memory, disk, network) help to improve:

  • Application performance 
  • User experience

User Experience (UX) Monitoring

UX monitoring helps evaluate the usability of applications to ensure a seamless experience for end-users. Metrics include:

  • Apdex
  • Page load times
  • Transaction success rates
  • User interactions
  • Error rates

These metrics provide insights into user behavior and app performance.

Error Monitoring

Error monitoring enhances application reliability by detecting and analyzing errors and exceptions. It helps identify and resolve issues through metrics such as:

  • Error rates
  • Error types
  • Stack traces
  • Error context

Availability Monitoring

Availability monitoring ensures that applications are accessible to users by detecting and resolving issues that may impact availability. Metrics like uptime, downtime, and response status codes contribute to:

  • Minimizing downtime 
  • Ensuring a smooth user experience

Infrastructure Monitoring

Monitoring the underlying infrastructure helps identify and address issues that affect application performance. Metrics like server health, network performance, and database performance allow for proactive management of infrastructure-related challenges.

Log Monitoring

Log monitoring involves analyzing logs to diagnose and troubleshoot issues while tracking:

  • Application events 
  • Behaviors

Metrics like log entries, error messages, and warnings provide insights into application performance and potential issues.

Security Monitoring

Security monitoring involves monitoring applications for:

  • Security-related events 
  • Vulnerabilities

Because of metrics like anomalies, intrusion attempts, and security incidents, organizations can ensure data integrity and confidentiality by detecting and responding to security threats.

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How To Monitor Application Performance

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Understand your monitoring objectives and identify key metrics such as:

  • Response time
  • Uptime
  • Error rates
  • User engagement

These metrics are crucial for your business, helping you improve user experience and optimize performance.

Select Appropriate Monitoring Tools

Research and choose monitoring tools that align with your monitoring objectives. To ensure comprehensive coverage, look for tools with capabilities like:

  • Real-time performance monitoring
  • Error tracking
  • Log analysis
  • Security monitoring

Establish Baseline Performance

To establish a baseline, measure and document your app’s performance under different conditions. This reference point will help you spot deviations in the future and take necessary action.

Set Up Real-Time Monitoring

Configure real-time monitoring for critical components and performance metrics like:

  • Server response time
  • Database performance
  • User interactions
  • Network latency

Use thresholds and alerts to get notified when performance falls below acceptable levels.

Monitor User Experience

To get insights into user interactions, implement user experience monitoring. Monitor metrics like page:

  • Load times
  • Click-through rates
  • Conversion rates
  • User journey flows 

These metrics will help identify areas for improvement and prioritize enhancements.

Monitor Application Logs

Keep an eye on application logs to detect:

  • Errors
  • Exceptions
  • Security breaches

Detect & Resolve

Use log monitoring and analysis tools to identify:

  • Patterns
  • Troubleshoot issues
  • Address potential risks promptly

Implement Security Monitoring

Use security monitoring tools to protect your app from security threats. These tools detect:

  • Unauthorized access attempts
  • Abnormal user behavior
  • Vulnerabilities

They respond promptly to potential security incidents.

Leverage Performance Testing

Conduct regular performance tests to analyze your app's performance under different loads and stress levels. Use load testing tools to:

  • Simulate real-world scenarios
  • Identify scalability issues
  • Optimize resource allocation

Establish Incident Response Processes

Define incident response processes to manage alerts and issues detected through monitoring. To ensure timely response and resolution of incidents, document:

  • Roles and responsibilities
  • Escalation procedures
  • Communication protocols

Continuously Review and Optimize

Review monitoring data regularly to identify areas for improvement. Analyze trends to:

  • Optimize performance
  • Enhance security measures
  • Refine user experiences over time

Application monitoring is an ongoing process that requires continuous review and optimization.

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5 Application Monitoring Best Practices

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1. Define the objectives

Before you embark on the journey of monitoring your application, it is vital to define your objectives clearly. To achieve your goals effectively:

  • Determine the key metrics and issues you want to monitor closely 
  • Establish the requirements and processes 

A clear understanding of your goal will help you stay focused and make informed decisions throughout the monitoring process.

2. Choose the right tool for your application

Selecting the appropriate tools for application monitoring is crucial. Depending on your objectives, evaluating different tools available in the market is essential to finding one that aligns with your business processes. 

Conduct a thorough analysis of your requirements and choose the tool that best suits your monitoring needs to ensure the success of your monitoring efforts.

3. Create alerts

Setting up monitoring processes is just the initial step. To any issues that may arise, you must:

  • Actively monitor 
  • Review alerts regularly to respond promptly 

Proactive Alerts

An effective monitoring system should include alerts that notify you of any anomalies or problems so that you can take immediate action to resolve them. Constant vigilance and quick response times are vital in ensuring seamless application performance.

4. Respond to Data

The data collected during application monitoring is invaluable. Review the insights gathered regularly to make well-informed decisions that enhance your application's functionality.

By analyzing the reports generated, you can identify:

  • Trends
  • Patterns
  • Areas for improvement

These allow you to optimize your application's performance continuously.

5. Optimize continuously

Application monitoring is an ongoing process. It is essential to monitor your application continuously to ensure that it consistently delivers optimal performance. 

Monitor & Improve

You can address issues promptly and focus on enhancing your application's performance by closely monitoring for:

  • Anomalies 
  • Trends 

Ongoing optimization ensures that your application meets user expectations and functions smoothly at all times.

Alerty Keeps Your Startup Running Smoothly

Alerty is a cloud monitoring service designed specifically for developers and early-stage startups. This powerful tool offers various monitoring services, including:

  • Application performance monitoring,
  •  Database monitoring
  • Incident management

 Alerty supports various technologies commonly used by developers, such as:

  •  NextJS
  • React
  •  Vue
  •  Node.js

 By leveraging Alerty, developers can quickly identify and resolve application issues, ensuring optimal end-user performance. 

Catch issues before they affect your users with Alerty's free APM solution today!

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What To Expect From APM Tools And Software

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Monitoring and Diagnosis

APM tracking and diagnosis functions play a vital role in ensuring application reliability and responsiveness. Your application performance monitoring (APM) solution should be able to detect and diagnose performance issues like

  • Poor response times
  • Excessive error rates
  • Resource utilization issues

Make sure your APM tool has performance alerts to allow for quick responses.

Root Cause Analysis

APM tools offer diagnostic features such as code-level insights and detailed errors, which help to identify the root cause of issues more effectively. Solving the initial problem is not enough; it also helps you address the root problem and prevent it from happening again.

Metrics for Performance and Reporting

APM tools ‘ performance metrics and reporting functions focus on evaluating and reporting end users’ experience interacting with software applications. 

Choose an APM tool that helps you:

  • Visualize data quickly 
  • Create actionable reports

These should contain benchmark performance indicators, insight into current operations, and prediction analytics.

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Catch Issues Before They Affect Your Users with Alerty's Free APM Solution

Alerty is a cutting-edge cloud monitoring service that caters to the needs of developers and early-stage startups. With a comprehensive suite of features like application performance monitoring, database monitoring, and incident management, Alerty is your go-to solution for running your applications smoothly.

Cutting-edge Technology Support

Alerty: Support for Diverse Technologies

  • Supports NextJS, React, Vue, and Node.js
  • Ensures coverage for various tech stacks
  • Helps developers identify and resolve issues promptly
  • Ensures applications run at peak performance

Database Monitoring Made Easy

Optimizing Database Performance With Alerty:

  • Monitors Supabase, PostgreSQL, and RDS
  • Tracks key metrics: CPU usage and memory consumption
  • Optimizes database performance

Incident Management and Real User Monitoring

Alerty features quick incident management tools, ensuring you can promptly address any issues. Its Real User Monitoring (RUM) capabilities also allow you to optimize user experience, leading to higher user satisfaction and retention rates.

Universal Service Monitoring

Alerty's Universal Service Monitoring covers dependencies like the Stripe API, OpenAI, and Vercel, giving you a comprehensive view of your application's ecosystem. By monitoring these dependencies, you can ensure your application's integrations run smoothly.

AI-driven Simplified Setup

Alerty uses artificial intelligence to simplify setup, making it easy for developers to get started quickly. By providing a cost-effective solution compared to competitors, Alerty ensures that monitoring your application's performance doesn't break the bank.

Seamless Integration With Essential Tools

Alerty integrates seamlessly with tools like Sentry, making it ideal for developers and small teams that need efficient, affordable monitoring solutions. By catching issues before they affect users, Alerty ensures that your applications always deliver a top-notch user experience.

Stop app outages before they happen! Get Alerty's free APM to monitor performance and proactively keep your users happy.

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