How to Monitor Application Performance in Production

Making sure that apps are performing optimally must start with a rigorous approach to monitoring. This is especially important in a production environment, where performance imperfections and outages are entirely unacceptable.

So what are the tools and tactics you need on your side if you want to keep tabs on apps efficiently and affordably in this context?

Choose the right tool for the job

A multitude of app monitoring solutions are available on the modern marketplace, and it is merely a case of choosing which one is best suited to your software and the underlying infrastructure it relies upon.

For example, this tool from SentryOne is built to track SQL Server performance, so if your app uses this type of database then it will be an enormously important product to invest in.

It is important to note that using third party monitoring tools is sensible because while platforms may offer native tracking tools, these are rarely as fully featured or capable as separate solutions.

Furthermore, with the right tools at hand, you can automate a lot of the monitoring and thus free up more time to deal with the other duties of your role.

Automation extends to scrutinizing hardware bottlenecks, software snafus and much more besides. This will make it simpler to troubleshoot issues and fix them sooner rather than later.

It will also avoid you needing to take a trial and error approach to app maintenance, since you will be able to pinpoint exactly which component or process is misbehaving.

Top tools in this space will additionally empower you with comprehensive monitoring dashboards and visualization functions. This means that you can not only make adjustments on the fly, but also see performance data expressed in a more digestible way, which will make it simpler for non-technical team members to understand as well.

Know what to monitor

There are all sorts of metrics generated by apps as they run, and part of the challenge of monitoring performance with a view to optimizing it is knowing which stats to focus on.

Hardware resource usage monitoring should be a priority, as if your server's CPU is being pushed to its limits, the memory is near capacity or the I/O activity is spiking in unexpected ways, you will know that something is awry.

Checking in on general app availability and uptime is also worthwhile. This is not just important for moment-to-moment performance, but also to give you an overview of app performance over longer periods. Taking a broader view can help you see patterns which would otherwise be obscured.

Listen to end users

Another aspect of app monitoring which is often overlooked is that the end users who come in contact with the software from day to day can be very good at judging when performance problems are present.

Even if some flaw or fault is not immediately obvious from the monitoring data you have to hand, by encouraging end users to provide feedback on their experiences, you can home in on undiagnosed performance dilemmas and take steps to address them.

This ties in with the way that app performance impacts upon the user experience (UX), not just on productivity levels and unplanned downtime.

If an app is frustrating to use because of some performance hiccup, this will hurt employee morale and have knock-on effects elsewhere.

Wrapping up

There is a lot you can learn from monitoring application performance, and this is simply not something that you can afford to turn a blind eye to.

Tools, technologies and training, added to a healthy dose of on-the-job experience, will enable you to manage apps optimally.