See the Flow of Requests Between Your Apps (and Other Appmap Updates)

by Jennifer Burner

New AppMap Settings

I’m excited to share some recent updates to TraceView’s AppMap, as it’s one of our customer’s favorite ways to visualize their app performance data (check out your AppMap here!).

Because the AppMap allows you to quickly see what’s upstream and downstream of each component, and because we automatically detect and monitor the network connections between them, you can quickly determine the source of any performance deterioration (is it a host/network/code issue?), and understand any resulting impact on other parts of your system.

Based on feedback from our customers, we’ve added some options to allow you to customize your AppMap in a way that works for your data. You’ll see the new “Map Settings” options on the top right of your map.

Request Volume

When “Request Volume” is enabled, the thickness of the lines between nodes on your map becomes a representation of traffic flow (requests sent) between your apps and resources.

• Visualizing the request rate in between, for example, an app and a database, allows you to identify when an issue may be caused by the current load on an app or a resource
• Quickly identify which resources in your system are potential bottlenecks
  
  

Request Volume: visualize traffic flow between your apps and resources

Color Nodes by Apdex

Apdex is an industry-standard method for reporting and comparing application performance in terms of end user experience (more details at https://docs.appneta.com/traceview-apdex).

• Instantly spot latency issues with any of your apps, without needing to configure alerts
• Identify commonalities between low-performing apps (such as a shared resource, or network bandwidth issues)

Color nodes by Apdex score: see how your apps are performing, at a glance

New Layout Option: “Force-directed” Layout

• For some maps, especially those with micro-services, force direction is a more natural layout for your AppMap.
• Allows your eye to detect how “central” an app or resource is in your environment (i.e. how many other components are dependent on it).
• You can pan, zoom and drag the map to get a view that works for you — especially useful as a diagram representing your infrastructure for a slide deck or to support internal architecture discussions.
  
  

Force-directed layout: quickly see which apps are most central

Your AppMap settings options will be remembered on a per-user basis. We’ve also made some other tweaks to the AppMap, including the addition of more detailed host metrics, improved app summary metrics and some visual tweaks to help you differentiate between apps and resources more quickly.

We hope that you enjoy the new insight into your app topology. As usual, please feel free to get in touch — feedback@appneta.com — if you’ve any questions or comments about the latest release!