New Relic

New Relic is an application performance monitoring (APM) tool used to monitor the code and browser performance for WordPress environments or for Node.js environments.

• By default, New Relic is disabled on an environment.
• In some applications it is possible that enabling New Relic will lead to an increase in CPU and memory usage by about 10% on traced requests.

The New Relic panel in the VIP Dashboard also provides the ability to add or remove user access for the application’s New Relic dashboard.

Limitations

• Once New Relic is enabled for the production environment of an application, it is possible to enable New Relic for an application’s non-production environment(s). New Relic enablement for non-production environment is temporary and will auto-disable after 7 days.
• When enabled, New Relic samples 10% of requests to an environment.
• No New Relic account other than WordPress VIP’s can be configured for an environment. Only licenses from VIP’s New Relic account can be used for applications hosted on the VIP Platform. This ensures that the VIP team has access to an environment’s New Relic dashboard to perform any analyses or investigations required to support customer sites.
• Configuring a New Relic agent to report data from outside of the VIP Platform to the VIP-provided New Relic account is not allowed. Any data originating outside of the VIP Platform will be blocked without warning.

Access

To access the New Relic panel:

1. Navigate to the VIP Dashboard for an application.
2. Select an environment from the environment dropdown located at the upper left of the VIP Dashboard.
3. Select “Performance” from the sidebar navigation at the left of the screen.
4. Select “New Relic” from the navigation submenu.

Enable

Within the New Relic panel of the VIP Dashboard for the application’s production environment:

1. Select the button labeled “Enable New Relic“
2. In the modal titled “Confirm New Relic enablement?” select the button labeled “Enable“.

To access the New Relic dashboard for the environment select the button labeled “View in New Relic“. The environment’s New Relic dashboard will be available after about 5 minutes have elapsed. Allow up to 10 minutes to elapse before data appears in the New Relic dashboard.

Enablement for non-production environments

Once New Relic has been enabled for the production environment of an application, New Relic can be enabled for any of the application’s non-production environments. New Relic enablement for non-production environment is temporary and will auto-disable after 7 days.

Disable

Within the New Relic panel of the VIP Dashboard for the application’s production environment:

1. Select the button labeled “Disable New Relic“
2. In the modal titled “Confirm New Relic disablement?” select the button labeled “Confirm“.

Disabling New Relic is environment-specific. New Relic can be selectively enabled and disabled on individual environments in an application.

New Relic feature options

Enabling New Relic for a VIP Platform environment will by default enable the New Relic APM feature. New Relic APM provides PHP application monitoring for WordPress application code, and Node.js application monitoring for Node.js application code.

Access to additional New Relic features are dependent on a customer’s contract with WordPress VIP.

Customers with an Enhanced, Signature, or Premier package can optionally enable:

• Browser Monitoring Lite: Page load timing and browser user information. SPA monitoring features are not included.
• Synthetic Monitoring: Availability monitoring.

No other New Relic features (e.g., Browser Pro, Mobile, Infrastructure, Logging, Distributed Tracing) can be enabled. Any data sent to other New Relic features might be blocked without warning.

Some customers might have the Browser Lite feature enabled from a legacy New Relic plan with the VIP account. These customers will continue to have access to the Browser Lite feature.

Security and obfuscation

Due to the possibility of exposing private attributes of requests, some of the query parameters are intentionally obfuscated in New Relic’s UI. In those cases, some values will be represented by question marks or no query params in traces or database queries will appear. Some of these can be selectively re-enabled, but with great caution. Only allow the values of query parameter keys that are always innocuous.