Observe Rock in New Relic

Observability is like having a backstage pass to see how Rock does its thing and how efficiently it does it. However, you need an outside helper to see what’s happening. We recommend New Relic – it's free, though there are a few caps on data and the number of people using it. Better yet, New Relic has a free non-profit program, and that will probably be all you need. For larger organizations, New Relic offers various pricing options, which you can check out at newrelic.com/pricing.

To start, you’ll want to go to All Entities > All Entities in New Relic as pictured below, to keep an eye on whether you’re sending telemetry data as expected. Your view should look very similar, with “rock-rms” under the Open Telemetry service.

New Relic - All Entities

Go ahead and click the link within Services – OpenTelemetry. This will get you to the meticulously designed graphs and charts that unveil your system's performance metrics. Note, you might not spot any data here until telemetry starts rolling in, which might take a few minutes after you've set up New Relic.

Traces

Traces give you the details of how a query works step-by-step, following a request (like a SQL query) as it moves through your database. It is displayed in a stack where you can see each step of the request.

From the above page, focus on the "Trace groups" section, where key transactions and activities are highlighted. You’ll see items in the Trace Groups section that start with “DB: SELECT” or similar. These are queries the system is processing. These will have a series of numbers following the title, which we can use in our Rock setup, so just be aware of that number for now.

You’ll see other trace groups that start with something other than “DB: SELECT”. For instance, you might see WEB or PAGE GET. If you pull up a PAGE GET you can drill down into a specific page load to spot any performance issues.

Lastly, but very importantly, we want to mention the search bar near the top of the page. This is a powerful tool that you can use to access all kinds of data. Start off by searching for the word “Rock” and looking at the options.

Metrics

Think of your system as a player and metrics as the game stats. They track performance (system), highlight weaknesses (bugs), and help you fine-tune your strategy. Just like a coach reviews stats to improve the game, you can use metrics to optimize queries and fix performance issues—because what’s measured is managed.

If you are using New Relic, navigate to APM&Services > Database > Metrics Explorer.

There are a variety of metrics that can be tracked. Some of the notable ones are:

• hosting.cpu.total: Tracks the total CPU usage of your IIS (Internet Information Services) hosting environment as a percentage. Rising CPU usage could indicate that your site is overloaded by visitors or inefficient background processes.
• hosting.sql.cpu: Tracks the total CPU usage generated by SQL queries in your SQL hosting environment as a percentage. If you notice the percentage is higher than normal, this is an opportunity to investigate your SQL queries.
• rock.request.all: Tracks the number of page loads, API requests or refreshes per minute. A high request volume signals your site is having frequent interaction. Unusually high numbers could be a good sign, the traffic is high. Low numbers may signal a problem with your site, prompting further investigation.

New Relic isn’t the only service that does this. Enter OpenTelemetry, the superhero of observability data. OpenTelemetry lets Rock team up with other vendors, not just New Relic. So, you've got the power to pick the monitoring sidekick that's right for you.