January 2023 Summaries

Building modern apps in Golang requires effective instrumentation to quickly identify issues and improve observability. Unlike interpreted languages, Go relies on manual instrumentation due to its compiled nature, which means developers need to manually add New Relic methods to their source code. To get started, developers should learn why they need to instrument their app, start with minimal viable instrumentation (MVI), plan ahead by exposing key identifiers such as request identifier, state identifier, environment identifier, and parameters identifier, and embed observability practices into their development cycle. By following these tips and using the New Relic Go agent, developers can improve their application's visibility and gain confidence in its inner workings.

The blog series provides comprehensive guidance on instrumenting Golang applications using New Relic, emphasizing manual instrumentation due to the compiled nature of Go, unlike interpreted languages that allow automatic instrumentation. It highlights the importance of instrumentation for quickly identifying issues during production incidents and suggests a minimal viable instrumentation approach using key identifiers like Request, State, Environment, and Parameters Identifier to enhance observability. The series also explains the process of starting data flow into New Relic with the StartTransaction method and encourages embedding observability practices to gain deeper insights into system performance. The series is designed as a hands-on experience using sample code, labs in Instruqt, and accompanying videos, and it stresses the importance of collaboration between development and operations teams to refine and enhance observability over time. The blog invites readers to sign up for a free New Relic account and participate in the Explorers Hub for further discussion and support.

As global economic uncertainty mounts, digital enterprises face pressure to reduce costs while maintaining performance. The traditional host-based pricing model for observability vendors like Datadog, Elastic, and Splunk is being challenged by New Relic's all-in-one platform pricing model, which offers more value per dollar. By paying for actual usage rather than peak usage, customers can avoid surprise bills and ballooning costs. New Relic's low infra monitoring cost, low log management cost, and low overall total cost of ownership (TCO) make it a more attractive option, with up to 5x more value for money compared to legacy tools. By consolidating observability needs in one platform, customers can realize significant savings, including reduced monitoring and logging costs, increased productivity, and improved revenue growth, with an average three-year ROI of 357% and a break-even point of just five months.

In an era where engineering teams face budget constraints and pressure to maximize efficiency, New Relic's usage-based pricing model offers a compelling alternative to traditional host-based pricing used by observability vendors like Datadog and Elastic. This model, which charges based on users and data usage rather than peak host counts, aims to reduce surprise billing and provide better value for money by aligning costs more closely with actual usage. It reflects a shift reminiscent of the cloud consumption model introduced by AWS in the late 2000s, which revolutionized the IT industry by allowing companies to pay for only the resources they used. As economic uncertainties loom in 2023, New Relic positions itself as a cost-effective and scalable solution for businesses to consolidate their observability needs, citing significant savings and productivity gains for customers who have transitioned from competitors.

PHP is a widely used server-side development platform, with 77.4% of websites utilizing it, including notable sites like Facebook and Wikipedia. The demand for PHP frameworks has led to the development of numerous options, each offering unique features to suit various programming needs. Key PHP frameworks include Laravel, known for its ease of use and scalability; Symfony, praised for its modular components and suitability for large-scale development; CodeIgniter, favored for its lightweight design; and Zend, appreciated for its adaptability despite criticism for lacking documentation. Other frameworks like Yii, Phalcon, CakePHP, Slim, PHPixie, FuelPHP, and Aura offer different advantages and challenges, catering to diverse project requirements from small-scale applications to complex, scalable platforms. Ultimately, the choice of framework depends on specific project needs, including performance, ease of use, scalability, and the developer's familiarity with PHP.

Azure Native New Relic Service is now available in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace to help accelerate cloud migration and multi-cloud initiatives. The service allows customers to collect telemetry data for applications and infrastructure, store it in Azure, and allocate their multi-year committed Azure spend to leverage New Relic. This integration provides a comprehensive view of the entire application stack, including underlying cloud infrastructure, application code, and user experience, enabling quick identification and troubleshooting of performance issues. With consumption-based pricing, customers can monitor their entire stack without incurring significant costs. The service also integrates with Azure Platform Logs and Azure Monitor Metrics, providing complete observability of Azure resources used by applications. Customers can subscribe to the service through the Azure Marketplace or Portal, and deploy infrastructure and APM agents easily from the portal, configuring resource monitoring within the portal itself.

Microsoft Azure has integrated the Azure Native New Relic Service into its Marketplace, enabling customers to subscribe and collect telemetry data for applications and infrastructure while storing it in Azure. This collaboration allows Azure users to allocate their multi-year committed Azure spend towards New Relic, simplifying budget management for observability. By subscribing through the Azure Marketplace, customers can consolidate their New Relic billing with Microsoft Azure spending, facilitating easier tracking and expense planning. The integration enhances the capability of DevOps teams to monitor and improve their entire stack from the Azure Portal, leveraging a cell-based platform to optimize performance across multi-cloud environments. The service provides comprehensive observability by consolidating Azure Platform Logs and Azure Monitor Metrics, allowing users to resolve issues swiftly and efficiently.

The article provides a walkthrough for users new to New Relic, highlighting key features and functionality of the platform, including application performance monitoring (APM), logs, web transactions, external services, and mobile app access. It emphasizes the importance of exploring documentation and best practices guides to maximize the platform's potential. The guide also introduces a video that demonstrates how to use New Relic for Node.js apps and provides an overview of the APM & Services Summary UI, which offers a comprehensive view of application performance at a glance.

As a software engineer, having a security mindset is essential to ensure you are developing reliable production-ready software. Having a security mindset goes beyond looking at application vulnerabilities and threat prevention, it's also about considering application integrity and system reliability. To build a security mindset, one should shift the security process left, making it part of the entire development lifecycle, and automate as much as possible. It's also important to think of the unhappy path when developing software, ensuring peer reviews of code and systems, keeping up-to-date on the latest practices, training software teams, and developing system redundancies. By following these tips, developers can develop a strong security mindset, resulting in secure and reliable applications over time.

Pricing and billing complexity can be a barrier to observability, with many vendors offering transparent and budget-friendly pricing, but some hiding hidden costs in contract terms. To maximize ROI, watch out for bait-and-switch pricing, unbudgeted monthly overage fees, limited data ingestion limits, unpredictable costs as you scale, and constant re-forecasting and re-contracting for multiple SKUs. Data explosion can double your bill due to log volumes being unpredictable when it comes to forecasting costs. To avoid these traps, look for vendors offering low data cost per GB, usage-based billing models with no penalties for scaling, and tools to manage data ingest and query, track, and alert on billing-related usage. New Relic's all-in-one pricing model offers flexibility to use any of its 30+ capabilities as needs change, without cost penalties or complicated forecasting.

Developing a security mindset is crucial for software engineers to create reliable and production-ready software, as discussed in a New Relic Twitter Space featuring experts from Snyk and movingimage. The conversation highlighted the importance of integrating security practices throughout the software development lifecycle, advocating for a shift from DevOps to DevSecOps, where security is considered from the outset. Key strategies include addressing security earlier in the process, automating security practices, simulating threats, and focusing on edge cases. Engineers are encouraged to regularly maintain libraries, conduct peer reviews, and develop system redundancies to prevent unexpected downtime. Staying updated with the latest security practices and training software teams to understand the impact of their code are essential steps in maintaining secure applications. The blog emphasizes that while developing a security mindset requires effort, the benefits of ensuring secure and reliable applications over time make it worthwhile.

Pricing and billing complexities can significantly impact the adoption of observability solutions, as different vendors employ varied models that often lead to hidden costs and penalties. Transparency in pricing is crucial, yet many vendors, such as Datadog and Splunk, employ tactics like low introductory prices followed by high overage fees, peak usage billing, and unwanted bundle requirements, which can double costs unexpectedly. New Relic offers a more predictable and flexible approach, utilizing a usage-based pricing model with stable metrics like user count and data ingestion fees, which avoids peak billing and includes comprehensive capabilities without the need for complex forecasting. As data volumes expand with cloud adoption and microservices, New Relic's model allows for scalability without proportional cost increases, contrasting the variable costs seen with other vendors.

Pulumi is an infrastructure as code framework that allows full-stack developers and cloud engineers to manage the lifecycle of their cloud resources using their favorite programming language. It supports observability as code, enabling users to embed their observability strategy into production environments. Pulumi offers a more flexible approach than Terraform, allowing users to use languages such as JavaScript, Python, Go, .NET, Java, and markup languages like YAML. By proactively monitoring applications with Pulumi and New Relic, developers can resolve issues before they affect customers, ensuring proactive monitoring of their stack. The framework enables users to create alerts using workflows in a step-by-step guide, utilizing the Pulumi CLI and recent versions of Node.js.

Utilizing New Relic with Pulumi allows for proactive monitoring of applications, enabling the resolution of issues before they impact customers by creating and sharing alerts with teams. The article provides a tutorial on using Pulumi, an infrastructure as code (IaC) framework that supports various programming languages, to manage cloud resources and create alerts with New Relic. It compares Pulumi with Terraform, highlighting that while both are open-source IaC tools, Pulumi allows the use of popular programming languages, unlike Terraform, which requires learning the HashiCorp Configuration Language. The choice between the two largely depends on user preference for language flexibility versus familiarity with a vendor-specific language. The blog also includes a guide for setting up alerts using Pulumi, TypeScript, and Node.js, emphasizing the integration of observability into cloud environments.

New Relic Vulnerability Management` is a solution designed to help modern software systems secure themselves by identifying and mitigating security vulnerabilities across their development pipeline. This integrated monitoring and security platform provides zero-configuration visibility, vulnerability testing capabilities, and automatic risk prioritization to ensure that security is integrated into every stage of the software lifecycle. It enables collaboration between DevOps and Security teams through a unified view of security data, allowing for seamless integration with trusted security tools and APIs. With New Relic Vulnerability Management, organizations can continuously analyze their applications for vulnerabilities, automatically know which security risks to prioritize, and leverage vulnerability testing capabilities without disrupting business operations. The solution is available as part of the all-in-one observability platform experience and offers benefits such as a unified security view across the stack, collaboration between teams, and continuous analysis for improved security posture.

New Relic Vulnerability Management` is a tool designed to help modern software systems by identifying and mitigating security threats across the entire development pipeline. It provides a unified security view across the stack and software lifecycle, allowing collaboration between DevOps and Security teams. The tool offers features such as zero-configuration visibility, vulnerability testing in limited preview, open third-party integrations, automatic risk prioritization, alerting on newly discovered vulnerabilities, and more. By integrating with other security tools like Snyk, Lacework, GitHub Dependabot, AWS Security Hub, and Aquasec Trivy, New Relic Vulnerability Management enables organizations to continuously analyze their applications for vulnerabilities, automatically know which security risks to prioritize, and leverage vulnerability testing to identify and remediate threats faster.

Securing modern software systems involves mitigating the risk of vulnerabilities present in the myriad components of today's applications, a responsibility that extends beyond security teams to encompass the entire enterprise through a DevSecOps approach. New Relic Security RX offers a comprehensive observability platform that enables zero-configuration visibility, vulnerability testing, and seamless integration with third-party security tools, allowing organizations to manage and prioritize security risks effectively. The platform's capabilities include continuous software composition analysis, automatic risk prioritization, and alerting on newly discovered vulnerabilities, facilitating quick assessment and remediation of security issues without disrupting business operations. Additionally, it provides a unified view of security across the software lifecycle, enhancing collaboration between DevOps and Security teams by integrating data from trusted tools and enabling the automatic correlation of vulnerabilities with the application environment. New Relic Security RX is accessible to users with a free account or as an add-on for standard accounts, promoting a proactive and integrated security mindset throughout the development pipeline.

We are reminded of Dr. King's book, Where Do We Go from Here, which outlined a plan for the future: "We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today." Our diversity, equity, and inclusion work uses learnings from our past to create a vision for a better New Relic. It's a critical step to make space for underrepresented communities at New Relic, especially in senior-level roles, as diverse voices lead to creating the best product for customers, driving success, and fostering a workplace where everyone belongs and thrives. Dr. King's work is personal to us, and we are committed to making our dreams and those of all Relics around the world a reality, recognizing that this work matters critically to our company's success.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day serves as an opportunity to reflect on King's legacy of inclusion and equity, which continues to inspire organizations like New Relic to foster diversity and inclusion within their structures. King's iconic "I Have a Dream" speech, which was partially improvised, laid a foundation for societal transformation, encouraging equity for marginalized groups. At New Relic, leaders like Ariane Evans, Kim Camacho, and Tyrone Dobson are committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, aiming to create a more inclusive workplace that allows diverse voices to thrive. The company emphasizes the importance of having diverse representation at all levels, particularly in senior roles, to enhance innovation and success. New Relic invites individuals passionate about contributing to this mission to apply for open senior-level positions and support the transformation of the company to better reflect King's ideals.

The 2022 Observability Forecast report provides insights into the state of observability in IT, highlighting trends driving its adoption, key use cases, and top capabilities deployed. The report was compiled from interviews with over 1,600 technology professionals and offers guidance on implementing full-stack observability to improve uptime, performance, and reliability. New Relic will continue to share findings and best practices through webinars and other content in the coming months, including a March webinar discussing the future of observability. By analyzing the report's key insights, organizations can inform their observability goals for 2023 and start reaping the benefits of full-stack observability.

The 2022 Observability Forecast report, based on interviews with over 1,600 technology professionals, highlights significant trends and insights into the evolving field of observability, emphasizing its importance for IT leaders. The report identifies security, governance, risk, and compliance as key drivers of observability, while cloud resource optimization and digital transformation support are top use cases. It also outlines the leading observability capabilities, including network, security, and database monitoring, noting that 94% of organizations use more than two monitoring tools. The benefits highlighted include improved uptime, performance, and reliability. Future discussions, such as those in the March 1 webinar, will address new APM features, OpenTelemetry enhancements, and advanced monitoring tools to further realize observability's potential in 2023.

New Relic has announced the return of its "Observability Day" (O11y Days) events, which bring together observability practitioners and New Relic users for informal meetups and workshops. The first event after a hiatus during the pandemic will take place in Dallas, Texas, on February 7, followed by Miami on February 23. These one-day events provide an opportunity for developers, operators, and others to learn about building and debugging services using observability practices. The events feature workshops, demos, and unguarded conversations with New Relic experts, as well as a chance to share needs related to the product roadmap and vision. The series is intended to be ongoing, with future events planned in various cities around the US and eventually worldwide.

Python is a versatile open-source language known for its developer productivity and ease of learning, widely used across industries like web development and artificial intelligence. However, its scripted nature can lead to inefficiencies compared to compiled languages, necessitating the use of application performance monitoring tools to optimize code performance. The article explores the importance of monitoring Python applications, detailing the benefits such as reduced mean time to detection and resolution, increased developer productivity, and enhanced team collaboration. It emphasizes the significance of monitoring various application layers—presentation, business, and persistence/database—using tools like New Relic for application performance monitoring (APM), which provides metrics like error rate and transaction time. The text discusses essential metrics such as response time, throughput, and error rate, and introduces distributed tracing for detailed performance insights. Additionally, it mentions open-source tools like OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and Zipkin, highlighting the challenges of custom implementations and the advantages of using a consolidated platform like New Relic for comprehensive monitoring.

New Relic is introducing a new collaboration feature that allows teams to work together more efficiently and resolve issues faster. This feature enables teams to start a conversation on any page in New Relic, including the dashboard, with full context included. The conversations are kept closer to the data, streamlining workflows and improving efficiency. The feature also includes a built-in screenshot tool, seamless integration with Slack, and a centralized Discussions page that captures all discussion history. This allows teams to communicate faster, reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR), capture institutional knowledge, and remove informational silos between teams and tools.

Tolkien's work offers valuable lessons for IT practitioners, particularly in understanding management styles and their impact on teams. The seven Maiar, including Gandalf, Sauron, Saruman, Radagast, the Blue Wizards, Melian, and others, can be seen as representative of different management approaches. Gandalf represents a empowering manager who prioritizes team success, while Sauron embodies a totalitarian dictator-like approach. Other characters, like Saruman and Radagast, exhibit self-aggrandizing and tool-focused behaviors, respectively. The Blue Wizards exemplify absentee managers, and Melian represents a singularly focused manager who invests in building up their team. The story of Tolkien's work also highlights the importance of giving employees tools and empowering them to grow, rather than relying on powerful objects (like root access) that can be misused. Ultimately, IT practitioners can learn from Tolkien's lessons about weaving personal stories into their work, finding joy and passion in their roles, and creating inclusive workplaces that value psychological safety. These insights are relevant not only for IT professionals but also for anyone seeking to improve their management skills or create a positive work environment.

The blog post draws intriguing parallels between J.R.R. Tolkien's characters and various management styles encountered in IT, using figures from the "Lord of the Rings" and "The Silmarillion" to illustrate different leadership models. Gandalf is portrayed as the ideal manager who empowers and supports his team, while Sauron represents a dictatorial and self-serving leader. Other characters like Saruman, Radagast, and the Blue Wizards are used to describe managers who are manipulative, overly focused on tools, or absentee, respectively. The narrative also touches on the importance of understanding the power dynamics in tech environments, likening powerful tools to Tolkien's Rings and emphasizing the potential risks when placed in inexperienced hands. Additionally, the post highlights how personal stories and passions can enhance work, drawing inspiration from Tolkien's integration of his own love story into his literary works. Through these analogies, the article suggests that weaving personal experiences into professional life can lead to more inclusive and fulfilling workplaces.

New Relic introduces new collaboration features designed to enhance team communication and streamline workflows by allowing users to start conversations directly on any page with full context, ultimately reducing mean time to resolution (MTTR) and improving software performance. These features include the ability to tag teammates, integrate seamlessly with Slack for two-way communication, and use a built-in screenshot tool for highlighting data. All discussions are consolidated in a single page, making it easier to track and review conversation history, thereby reducing miscommunication and informational silos. Users are encouraged to provide feedback on these features and can explore them further by signing up for a free New Relic account, which offers data ingestion and user access benefits.

Cross-browser testing is essential in ensuring that web applications function correctly across various browsers, devices, and assistive technologies, as each browser interprets code differently. This testing helps identify and resolve browser-specific compatibility issues, such as JavaScript, CSS, HTML validation, and DOCTYPE errors, which can affect user experience. While manual testing offers control but can be time-consuming and inconsistent, automated testing provides a faster and more reliable alternative despite higher initial costs. Effective cross-browser testing involves creating a baseline, developing a strategy, and choosing appropriate testing infrastructure, such as simulators, emulators, or real devices. Real user monitoring (RUM) and browser monitoring tools like New Relic can further enhance the testing process by providing insights into JavaScript errors, page load times, and user interactions, ensuring a seamless experience for users across different platforms.

The author reflects on lessons from J.R.R. Tolkien's works that can be applied to IT career development and best practices. One key takeaway is that solutions often don't travel as quickly or easily as they may seem, and sometimes the hardest choices are necessary for a story to unfold. This lesson encourages embracing complexity and accepting that mistakes can lead to valuable experiences. The author also draws on Tolkien's depiction of compelling truth overcoming persistent fear, highlighting the importance of building reputation, setting clear boundaries, presenting information coherently, and persistently repeating facts to drive action. Additionally, the value of asking for proof and action when making claims is emphasized, as well as protecting one's tools and resources from being taken away.

Leon Adato, a Developer Relations Engineer at New Relic, explores IT career lessons derived from J.R.R. Tolkien's works, "The Hobbit," "The Lord of the Rings," and "The Silmarillion," using the narratives to draw parallels with challenges faced in the IT industry. He discusses how characters' choices, such as not taking the eagles directly to Mount Doom, offer insights into the necessity of accepting complex solutions and learning from challenging journeys. Adato highlights Gandalf's interaction with Théoden as an example of leveraging reputation, consistency, and the strategic use of tools to combat misinformation and influence decision-making in IT. He emphasizes the importance of perseverance in presenting data coherently to drive action and suggests that IT professionals should maintain access to essential tools for validating their claims. Adato concludes by expressing his intent to continue with further insights in a subsequent post, inviting readers to engage with his analysis and share their perspectives on social media.