How to Get Synthetics Monitoring to Work in New Relic
If you want to use synthetics monitoring in New Relic, you need to understand how to set it up correctly. In this article, you will learn how to bypass the HEAD request, configure a proxy for all traffic to and from the monitor endpoint, and activate a scripted browser monitor.
Bypassing HEAD request to get synthetics monitoring to work in new relic
Synthetics monitoring provides continuous access to the results of your web application’s performance. It can be used to diagnose issues before they impact end users. It works by performing automated tests of your web application and collecting both detailed and aggregated statistics.
In previous versions, the NewRelic agent recorded metrics outside the transaction. This caused problems with the UI and could also mask metrics generated by the application. However, this has changed with the version 6.6.0 of the agent. This version will no longer send error events and traces to NewRelic if the error collection is disabled in the application server’s configuration.
Configuring a proxy for all traffic to and from the monitor endpoint
If you want to monitor all traffic to and from your monitor endpoint, you need to configure a proxy. New Relic uses this proxy to collect information about your network. The data is provided in JSON format. New Relic displays the information in the infrastructure monitoring UI.
To configure the proxy for all traffic to and from the monitor, first, enable proxy access on the endpoint. New Relic agents require access to certain networks and ports. The default is port 80 for HTTP traffic, but you can also enable port 443, which is recommended for encrypted HTTPS traffic.
Alternatively, you can use the New Relic API. The API provides a $http object that pre-configures requests to pass through an HTTP proxy. This feature can be useful for testing without specifying a proxy. In addition, you can use the $env.PROXY_HOST and $env.PROXY_PORT to generate HTTP traffic and record HTTP traffic metrics.
