AppFormix extends performance monitoring to the infrastructure

It’s important for developers to monitor application performance to identify and resolve issues. However, the issues that impact the performance of an application may not have anything to do with the app itself. AppFormix wants to help organizations take that same logic and apply it more broadly to the cloud infrastructure the app is delivered on as well.

Application Performance Management (APM) tools are great for…well, for managing application performance. AppFormix believes, however, that [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]APM only takes you so far. You also need to manage infrastructure performance.[/inlinetweet]

The theory behind APM is simple enough: proactively monitor applications to detect and resolve issues in real-time without undue impact on application performance. What if the issues affecting application performance don’t have anything to do with the application itself, though? There are multiple components involved in developing, deploying, and running an application. One very important element of app performance is the infrastructure hosting and delivering that app. AppFormix wants to help organizations bring that same sort of APM visibility and efficiency to proactively addressing issues with the underlying infrastructure.

In a press release announcing its exit from stealth mode and availability of AppFormix in beta, the company said, “Applications can only perform as well as the infrastructure they run on. Truly reliable performance can only occur when cloud infrastructure is more responsive to the needs of developers and their applications. AppFormix software automatically detects and eliminates resource contention among applications on shared infrastructure. Resource bottlenecks are always moving, and AppFormix is focusing on enabling developers, operations and DevOps teams to use the same toolset to pinpoint them in real-time and establish policies for preventing problems in the future.”

In the world of DevOps and open source it’s crucial for tools and platforms to play nicely together. It seems that AppFormix delivers on that front. The company claims that AppFormix integrates with OpenStack, Kubernetes, Mesos and other platforms to enable organizations to effectively manage the physical infrastructure while also providing visibility and management for the virtual environment and container technologies.

“For example, let’s say your application is a flashy, new (and expensive) sports car. Would you drive it on a dirt road? A rickety bridge? A street cratered with potholes? Of course not. But unfortunately cloud infrastructure today IS that dirt road, it IS that rickety bridge, and it IS that street cratered with potholes,” explains Sean Dunnigan in an AppFormix blog post. “If your enterprise does not invest in monitoring and controlling cloud infrastructure, your applications will be in for a bumpy ride. Enterprise cloud infrastructure needs monitoring and control to clearly eliminate bottlenecks and contention to ensure applications have the best infrastructure to “drive” on.”

Check out the complete post on DevOps.com: AppFormix promises to help you manage your cloud infrastructure more efficiently.