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. New Relic is provided by WordPress VIP as an Integration and is available for activation on any environment.

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

An organization can add or remove user access for an application’s New Relic dashboard within the App Integrations panel for the New Relic Integration.

Limitations

• When activated, New Relic samples 10% of requests to an environment.
• New Relic activation for a non-production environment is temporary and will auto-disable after 7 days.
• 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.
• New Relic may not be supported by the most recent PHP version if it is currently in “testing”. To be able to use New Relic, use a version of PHP included in New Relic’s PHP agent compatibility list by setting the PHP Version for the environment in the VIP Dashboard.

Activate

To activate the New Relic Integration for an environment:

1. Navigate to the VIP Dashboard for an application.
2. Select “Integrations” from the sidebar navigation at the left of the screen to access the App Integrations panel.
3. Select “New Relic” from the list of Integrations in the App Integrations panel.
   • Integration activation is environment-specific. If needed, select a different environment (e.g., staging, develop) from the dropdown located at the upper left of the VIP Dashboard application view.
4. In the section labeled “Activate Integration“ on the Configure Integration panel, activate New Relic for the environment by toggling the switch to “Active” (green background with a white check mark).
5. In the modal titled “Confirm New Relic activation?” select the button labeled “Confirm“.

After about 5 minutes have elapsed, the New Relic dashboard for the environment can be accessed by selecting the button labeled “View in New Relic“. Allow up to 10 minutes to elapse before data appears in the New Relic dashboard.

Activation for non-production environments

The New Relic Integration can be activated for any of an application’s non-production environments. New Relic activation on non-production environment is temporary and will auto-deactivate after 7 days.

Deactivate

To deactivate the New Relic Integration from an environment:

1. Navigate to the VIP Dashboard for an application.
2. Select “Integrations” from the sidebar navigation at the left of the screen to access the App Integrations panel.
3. Select “New Relic” from the list of Integrations on the App Integrations panel.
   • Integration activation is environment-specific. If needed, select a different environment (e.g., staging, develop) from the dropdown located at the upper left of the VIP Dashboard application view.
4. In the section labeled “Activate Integration“ on the Configure Integration panel, deactivate New Relic by toggling the switch to “Inactive” (grey background with a white “x”).
5. In the modal titled “Confirm New Relic deactivation?” select the button labeled “Confirm“.

New Relic feature options

Activating 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.