Alexis Kestler
Application performance monitoring (APM) is an essential tool for developers to understand how their applications are functioning before and after deployment. While APM solutions were traditionally hosted on internal servers and developer workstations, the rise of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) led to a migration of these tools to the cloud. Cloud-based APM provides valuable advantages compared to on-premise options, eliminating the need for dedicated hardware and transferring the burden of tool management to the vendor. Now developers can simply access their APM tool through a web browser to monitor application performance.
Retrace by Stackify is one such SaaS APM tool that supports both .NET and Java applications. For .NET or Java developers seeking a more robust profiler, Stackify also offers Prefix to understand code execution paths and web request processing times. Feel free to try Prefix anytime on your local dev environment.
Key Capabilities of Retrace APM
Retrace prioritizes security with SAML single sign-on, two-factor authentication, and granular access roles to limit data exposure. Getting started is straightforward – simply deploy the Stackify APM+ agent to the server hosting your application. The agent transmits profiling data to Stackify for analysis.
The Retrace dashboard lists your monitored applications and insightful summary data like type, instances, requests per minute, satisfaction rating, errors, features, and alerts. Clicking an application drills down into detailed performance graphs. Hovering over a graph reveals precise metrics at a point in time.
Handy icons on the dashboard indicate available error details, logs, and APM+ data for each application. The APM+ screen visualizes transaction performance trends over time. You can hover over any graph area to instantly view metrics for that time period.
The Health page efficiently summarizes server health stats like CPU/memory usage, server alerts, key transactions, and errors per minute. The Errors screen shows specific error occurrences, while the Logs screen allows filtering application logs by server, level, type, and time range. The Logs page also surfaces alerts for troubleshooting.
The Power of Retrace APM
In my experience, Retrace excels at pinpointing errors and their frequency down to the exact line of code. This granular insight is invaluable for diagnosing performance issues. Retrace also provides stellar documentation to get up and running quickly.
According to Gartner, the global APM market is projected to grow from $4.4B in 2019 to $7.1B by 2024. As more organizations embrace APM, Retrace stands out for its robust capabilities comparable to competitiors while its reasonable licensing model is far cheaper than rivals.
Before my team switched to Retrace, we used New Relic which cost over $20k annually for only 5 production apps. Retrace supports unlimited apps for a fraction of the price. With world-class features at budget-friendly pricing, Retrace warrants strong consideration for your APM needs. Let me know if you have any other questions!
