In the increasingly digitalized scenario in which we live, application monitoring has become an essential practice for companies and organizations of all sizes. From small businesses to large corporations, the ability to monitor application performance, availability and security is crucial to ensuring a consistent and satisfying experience for users, as well as protecting the company’s digital assets. In this article, we’ll explore what application monitoring is, why it’s important, and how it can be implemented effectively.

What Is Application Monitoring?

Application monitoring is the process of continuously tracking the performance and health of an application, from the underlying infrastructure to the end-user experience. It involves collecting, analyzing, and interpreting relevant data to identify potential problems, optimize performance, and ensure the application is operating as expected.

This data may include performance metrics such as server response time, data transfer rate, CPU and memory usage, as well as information about errors, crashes, and unusual activity. Application monitoring can also cover security aspects such as unauthorized access attempts, data breaches and suspicious activity.

Why is it important to monitor your applications?

1 – Early Problem Identification: Continuous monitoring allows you to detect performance problems or system failures as soon as they occur, before they can significantly affect end users. This allows for a quick and effective response to resolve issues before they impact the business.

2 – Performance Optimization: By analyzing monitoring data, development and operations teams can identify areas of improvement in application performance and implement proactive adjustments to optimize efficiency and speed.

3 – Availability and Reliability Guarantee: The unavailability of an application can result in lost revenue, damage to reputation and customer dissatisfaction. Continuous monitoring helps ensure applications are always available and reliable, minimizing unplanned downtime.
4 – Improved User Experience: By monitoring application performance and identifying bottlenecks or usability issues, organizations can improve the user experience, ensuring that applications are fast, responsive and easy to use.

5 – Proactive Security: Application monitoring also plays a crucial role in identifying and mitigating security threats such as hacking attempts, malware and data breaches. By detecting suspicious activity or unusual patterns, security teams can respond quickly to protect company data and systems.

In summary, application monitoring plays a key role in maintaining application performance, availability, and security in a constantly evolving digital environment. By taking a proactive approach to data monitoring and analysis, organizations can ensure a consistent and satisfying experience for users, as well as protect their digital assets against threats and adversity.

Main monitoring features of the Elven Platform

  • Monitoring via webhook hit/failure and timing
  • SRE availability indicators
  • DORA Indicators
  • Active application monitoring
  • Component monitoring (database, queue, cache) among others
  • Reliability Matrix
  • error budget
  • Integration with GitHub and Bitbucket
  • Timeline with latest updates
  • Synthetic monitoring
  • Dash with key metrics

The Synthetic Monitoring Center is a tool designed to facilitate efficient visualization and management. This guide provides an overview of the available filtering functionalities to optimize monitoring.

In Synthetic Monitoring, filters are used to efficiently visualize and manage different states. Below are the available filter categories: 

  • All: Displays all Synthetic Monitoring, regardless of their status. 
  • Inactive: Shows only inactive Synthetic Monitoring. 
  • Success: Filters and shows only Synthetic Monitoring that returned Success. 
  • Pending: Lists Synthetic Monitoring that are pending, awaiting some action or decision. 
  • Error: Displays Synthetic Monitoring that have encountered an error. 

Each filter allows you to focus on specific resources, facilitating management and tracking as needed. 

In addition to filtering Synthetic Monitoring by status, you can also view them based on different time intervals. The available period options are: 

  • All: Shows resources from all periods. 
  • Last Day: Displays resources that had activities in the last 24 hours. 
  • Last Week: Filters resources with activities in the last week. 
  • Last Month: Lists resources that were active in the last month. 
  • Last Year: Shows resources that had activities in the last year. 

These time filters help analyze trends and changes in resource usage over different periods, facilitating decision-making and strategic planning.

The Custom Range option offers maximum flexibility by allowing you to set a specific date and time range for monitoring. Here’s how to use it:

  1. Start Date: Select the start date and time of the interval.  

  1. End Date: Choose the end date and time of the interval. 

After setting the desired parameters:  

  • Click on Apply Time Range Time Range to apply the filter. 

  • If you wish to cancel the selections made, click on Cancel. 

This functionality is ideal for precise and detailed analysis, allowing you to track activities in specific periods adjusted to your needs.

    If you wish to cancel the selections made, click on Cancel.

Made synthetically, with
script, Synthetic Monitoring continuously tests the availability of an
HTTP, immediately alerting you as soon as there are failures. One
Platform detects, according to users’ rules, any type of problem in your
digital product before they affect your customers, ensuring its
availability and reliability.

Configuring Synthetic Monitoring

To configure Synthetic Monitoring, click on Synthetic in the platform’s left side menu.

After opening the
Synthetic Monitoring Center, where it will list all your synthetic
monitoring, click on “New Synthetic Monitoring” to add a monitoring.

Firstly, you need to:

1) Choose the name of
the monitoring and the Environment. If you want to create an environment
through this page, click on “+ Environment” and you will be directed to
the creation screen. When you finish creating, click on the reload
symbol for the environment to appear in the list.

2) After configuring the environment, choose the check interval in Interval check.

3) In Response Template,
knowing what the Step response will be, you can place this response in
the field to generate variables. By clicking on “Generate Keys”, the
platform will generate variables to be used in requests in any of the
steps. By clicking on the variables, it will be copied to the clipboard.

Configuring the steps

After the first moment, you will configure the customizable steps for how you want your page or Web APIs to be monitored.
To do this, in the step settings:
1) Choose the name of each step, the Healthcheck URL and the Timeout.
Note: For security reasons, it is
not permitted to enter an IP in the healthcheck field. To monitor an IP,
you need to enter it in a secret and use it in healthcheck
2) Choose the method, whether it is
GET or Post, select Skip SSL Validation, to ignore the existence of the
SSL certificate, and choose TLS Renegotiation, if the security protocol
is required. In the case of the Post method, select the Post-Body Type
from the Raw or “application/x-www-form-undecoded” options. In the case
of Raw, select the Raw Type (JSON, Text, Javascript, XML or HTML) and
fill in the Post Body according to the chosen Raw Type. If it is
“application/x-www-form-undecoded”, fill in the key and value, if you
would like to configure more than one key, click the plus (+) button
next to it.

3) Click on “Optional request” to
configure a Header where you can place the Validation String, the
Headers and Values. If you want to configure more than one Header, click
the plus (+) button next to it.


Assertions

Here you will define what the request should be returned to.

1) In the Source field,
choose the source between JSON Body, Status Code and Text Body (Fill in
the Property field, if the choice is JSON Body).

2) Choose one of the options available in Comparison.


3) define the Target Value.

Assertions configuration examples:





The variables generated by the Response Template can be used in the URL, Headers or Post Body/application/x-www-form-undecoded.

1) To use them in the Value, you need to add it to the field in the same way it was generated.


2) To use a variable in the URL, you need to add it to the URL that will be checked.


3) To use a variable in the Post Body, simply add it as a value.


If you want more than two monitoring steps, click on the “Add Step” button at the end of the steps configuration step


After configuring the steps, If you want, you can configure the opening of an automatic incident. Select incident severity, check interval time in
the Check Interval in seconds (…) to close and open incidents, and
the number of failures and hits to also open and close an incident.

After
configuring the incident, choose which team will be notified and enable
the “Enable to set up automatic incidents opening” switch to be
notified when there is an incident.

After all these configurations, click on “Create monitoring” to create synthetic monitoring.


To edit or delete your monitoring, click on the button with three dots to perform one of two actions.


1 – In the side menu, click on Services Hub

2 – In the Monitoring category, click on the Website POST card

3 – You will be directed to the Website POST configuration form, fill in the fields


4 – If you want, you can configure automatic incident opening. In the Open automatic incident section, fill in the fields:

  • Severity -> Choose between “SEV-1 – Critical”, “SEV-2 – High”, “SEV-3 – Moderate”, “SEV-4 – Low”, “SEV-5 – Informational” or “Not Classified”;
  • Check Interval in seconds -> This is the interval at which checking will take place (this interval cannot be less than the number of failures x the Interval configured in the monitoring form;
  • Failures to open automatic incident -> It is the number of failures necessary to open the automatic incident;
  • Check Interval in seconds -> This is the interval in which checking will take place (this interval cannot be less than the number of hits x the Interval configured in the monitoring form;
  • Hits to close automatic incident -> It is the number of hits needed to close the automatic incident;
  • Responders -> These are the teams that will be notified if there are incidents in this monitoring, and you can add one or multiple teams;

If necessary, you can create a team by clicking + RESPONDER, you will be directed to the form

to create the team, then click on the button for the new team to appear in the list

***Don’t forget to activate the Enable to set up automatic incidents opening toggle to save the automatic incident opening settings

5 – Click on CREATE MONITORING 

 

This type of monitoring allows your application to send data to our API (Application Programming Interface). Once you register a Webhook application, a CURL is generated for implementation in your application, which will send hit and fail data. This way, our platform can process these data and notify your team in case your application encounters an error. To choose this type of monitoring, click on “Product” in the platform’s side menu and then click on the card “Receive and record hits and failures via Webhook.” 


Webhook is a technology used to enable communication between two
applications and send near real-time notifications. The sending or
receiving of data is triggered when a specific event occurs in one of
the applications.

To monitor a Webhook connector in the One Platform:

  1. Go to the product application where you want to add Webhook as a dependency.

  2. Click on the “Products” menu, then select the desired product card.

  3. Next, click on the name of the specific application you want to work with.

  4. Under “External Dependencies,” located just below the latency graph, you can add or search for an already registered dependency.

  5. To search for a dependency, enter its name in the search field.

  6. To add a new dependency, click on the green button with a plus (+) symbol.

 

 

When you click “Add,” a modal will
appear. In this modal, you will name your dependency and choose the
Environment. In the “Check type” field, select the option “Others,” and
in the “Method” field, choose “Webhook.” After selecting the method, a
field for the Healthcheck URL will appear.

 

 

 

Note: For security reasons, it is not permitted to enter an IP in the
healthcheck field. To monitor an IP, you need to enter it in a secret
and use it in healthcheck

We would like to inform you that the session duration on our platform is limited to 1 hour for security reasons. This measure has been implemented to protect your privacy and ensure the security of your information while using our services.

Limiting session duration helps prevent unauthorized access to your account, reducing the risk of attacks and protecting your data against potential threats. Additionally, it provides a safer and more reliable experience for all of our users.

To continue using our services after the session ends, simply log in again.

1 – In the side menu, click on Services Hub

2 – In the Monitoring category, click on the Website GET card

3 – You will be directed to the Website GET configuration form, fill in the fields

4 – If you want, you can configure automatic incident opening. In the Open automatic incident section, fill in the fields:

  • Severity -> Choose between “SEV-1 – Critical”, “SEV-2 – High”, “SEV-3 – Moderate”, “SEV-4 – Low”, “SEV-5 – Informational” or “Not Classified”;
  • Check Interval in seconds -> This is the interval at which checking will take place (this interval cannot be less than the number of failures x the Interval configured in the monitoring form;
  • Failures to open automatic incident -> It is the number of failures necessary to open the automatic incident;
  • Check Interval in seconds -> This is the interval in which checking will take place (this interval cannot be less than the number of hits x the Interval configured in the monitoring form;
  • Hits to close automatic incident -> It is the number of hits needed to close the automatic incident;
  • Responders -> These are the teams that will be notified if there are incidents in this monitoring, and you can add one or multiple teams;

If necessary, you can create a team by clicking + RESPONDER, you will be directed to the form

to create the team, then click on the button for the new team to appear in the list

***Don’t forget to activate the Enable to set up automatic incidents opening toggle to save the automatic incident opening settings

5 – Click on CREATE MONITORING 

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