The best Application Performance Monitoring tools available

We show you 3 top application performance monitoring tools out there that will definitely do the job for anyone

The 3 best tools for your application performance surveillance

In the following, we present you 3 great APM (Application Performance Monitoring) tools that will please almost all users in the field. Those solutions are not the most specialized as they provide basic functionalities of APM, yet at an absolute top level. Let us get to it.

1. SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor: Good if you do not shy away from baffling complexity

SolarWinds lets you try this APM tool in a trial, so there are plenty opportunities to get a feeling for it. As with many SolarWind solutions, Server and Application Monitor can be purchased individually or as part of a system management package. The latter would also include the company’s Virtualization Manager, Storage Resource Monitor, and Web Performance Monitor. In addition, there are other bundles – which, in total, can be a bit confusing, though.

One genuinely useful feature of Server and Application Monitor is the AppStack module. This gives users a visual representation of the applications that are running on their system, with all the supporting layers of services and hardware displayed in a stack under each application. This also makes it possible to see the status of the application, the metrics for the application server it is running on and, if running a virtual environment, all the servers and networks that underlie that virtual machine.

Server and Application Monitor is designed specifically for large networks, and the complexity of the solution means it is probably not suitable for small businesses and startups. SolarWind’s solution also supports the auto-discovery of devices on a network –which is extremely convenient and useful for the setup. Also handy is the use of drag-and-drop widgets to customize the appearance of the dashboard. Finally, the alerting features, which are very reliable but keep alert noise to a minimum, and the reporting system with preconfigured compliance templates are worth highlighting.

2. Paessler PRTG: Good if you are looking for an all-in-one monitoring solution

Paessler PRTG is a powerful all-round solution that is quick to set up and easy to maintain. It allows you to visualize your entire IT network with highly customizable maps and dashboards via custom HTML. Flexible alerting with more than 10 built-in technologies ensures that you will always be notified exactly the way you want to when something in your IT infrastructure needs your attention. Apart from comprehensive video tutorials and how-to guides on the Paessler website, the company also offers world-class customer support if you do have a question about their solution.

Paessler PRTG comes with numerous databases, mail servers, and web server sensors:

• As an out-of-the-box feature, PRTG supports monitoring of all major SQL server applications (Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL). In addition, PRTG can integrate virtually any database that is addressable via Object Linking and Embedding, Database (OLE DB) or Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) into application monitoring using the ADO SQL v2 sensor.
• Communication via e-mail still forms the backbone of almost all corporate communication. In addition to the standards for various email servers, Paessler PRTG includes on-board tools for monitoring blacklists and round-trip sensors to keep an eye on the complete send and receive cycle of an email.
• The third group of standard applications found in most companies are web servers. As the basis for both internet and intranet sites, these applications also have extremely high availability and performance requirements. Paessler PRTG covers the most important representatives in this area as well and automatically detects IIS and Apache web servers using a whole range of ready-made sensors.

3. DataDog: Good, if you like the Underdog

Datadog is a serious monitoring, security, and analytics platform for developers, IT operations teams, security engineers, and various users in the cloud era. The modern SaaS platform very confidently integrates and automates infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, and concrete log management to achieve unified, real-time monitoring of the entire technology stack. Datadog, while still occasionally seeming to have the habitus of an underdog in the industry, is being used by companies of all sizes and now in virtually every possible industry to enable digital transformation and cloud migration.

Datadog offers:

• End-to-end APM
• Monitoring of application performance of any stack, anywhere
• Tracing without limits; no sampling, no blind spots
• Code-level visibility as well as instant root cause analysis

We find it particularly interesting to mention that Datadog only recently presented (at its virtual customer event called Dash) a series of innovations aimed specifically at developers. The focus was on their innovative CI Visibility tool, which can be used to measure app performance as early as the software testing phase. This makes it possible to assess application performance even before the application is deployed in production.

Our recommendation: Paessler PRTG

At this point, we have to conclude that for everyday use, Paessler PRTG is one step ahead of the other two solutions. With Paessler PRTG, users get a fully comprehensive, very powerful APM solution that also reliably monitors all other areas of an extensive network. The comprehensive portfolio of features, combined with easy-to-understand licenses, hosted options, and fair billing, will probably be the deciding factor for many users. So, if you do not have all the reasons for wanting Solarwind’s product complexity and do not want go for the underdog, Paessler PRTG is the right solution for you.

We hope this was helpful

APM makes sure that services are delivered to the customer at the specified level and identifies the issues that are related to application performance (which can be monitored or tracked based on various categories such as load time, application response time, and so on). Nowadays, applications are becoming more complex and distributed due to the use of technology. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor the performance of an application to increase the satisfaction of end users.

About APM

Application Performance Monitoring – or APM – deals with the performance monitoring of applications. The goal is to provide users with an optimal operating experience when using a particular piece of software or an entire software package.

APM tools provide administrators with data that they can use to identify negative influences and problems in application performance. Ideally, admins will be presented with data straight away that will help them eliminate the problems. APM monitoring tools can be designed specifically for one application or for monitoring multiple applications on the same network. They collect data on CPU performance, memory usage, bandwidth, and data flow.

The functional scope of APM can be quite individual and broad. What is often considered to be a very important task of application performance monitoring is combining the data from the different monitoring “silos” into a dashboard and correlation engine. This can highly simplify the reading of a data log. Resource monitoring in private or hybrid cloud environments that is in place to support application performance is called Cloud Application Performance Management – or CAPM. In virtual environments, APM can help monitor application servers to ensure that they are compliant with service level agreements (SLAs). It also lets users define rules for automatic notifications.

We hope this brief comparison will help you identify and use the APM solution that is right for you. Good luck!

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