New Relic Plugins

New Relic announced a new plugin framework for their excellent SaaS APM solution. I have installed both the Apache and Redis plugins. Now I have a central location where I can correlate events. The Apache plugin offers insight into counters like requests, worker processes, and cpu load. The Redis plugin offers insight into memory use, keys, and connections.

Both plugins require python, which should not be a problem on all modern distros. Installation was a snap. Simply install the application with pyton pip, move the config file and init file to their respective locations, modify the config to your environment, and start the service. You need to supply your New Relic key. Within minutes you will start seeing data in the dashboard.

Next, I will install the MySQL plugin (requires java).

See:
New Relic Platform

Automatically update New Relic after app deployment.

I use TeamCity to build and deploy web applications. Using curl and an additional build step, I can update New Relic when the build is deployed to production.

Add a Build Step of build runner type Command Line. The command and options are:

curl -H “x-api-key:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx” -d “deployment[application_id]=xxxxxx” -d “deployment[host]=%system.agent.name%” -d “deployment[description]=This deployment was sent using curl.” -d “deployment[revision]=”%build.number% https://rpm.newrelic.com/deployments.xml

This will update New Relic with the build agent and build number.