RunCloud provides basic host and application monitoring services in the RunCloud dashboard. You can view the current system load, memory usage, disk utilization, and up-time from within your dashboard.
However, if you need detailed insights, then you should use a dedicated tool such as New Relic.
Host Monitoring
You can use host monitoring to view current and historical usage patterns of the CPU, memory, storage, RAM, and network, along with all of the error logs. You can use this to set up alerts that notify you in the event of an outage.
To set up host monitoring, open your New Relic dashboard and click on “Add Data“.
Now go to the “Kubernetes & containers” tab and select Docker.
On the next screen, you will get a docker command. You will need to run this command on your server to set up monitoring. If you are not sure how to do this, read our knowledgebase post on How To Log In via SSH in RunCloud Server.
After running the above command in your terminal, your server will start sending metrics to New Relic. After a few minutes, you will be able to view this data in your New Relic dashboard.
Monitor Applications
RunCloud makes it super easy to monitor individual applications even when they are deployed in containers. You can use the newrelic/php-daemon module to monitor your applications and gain meaningful insights.
To start with application monitoring, you need your New Relic license key. Log into your New Relic account and click on your profile photo in the lower left of the screen to open a menu.
In that menu, click on the “API Keys” to open the API settings page.
On that page, you can either create a new “INGEST – LICENSE Key“, or copy an existing key to your clipboard.
After you have located the key, go to your RunCloud dashboard and open the server dashboard. In the left menu, click on the “Services” button. This will show you all of the available container images on your server.
Scroll down to find the PHP that you want to monitor and click on the “…” button next to it. You will then find the option to add or change environment variables.
In the pop-up menu, you will need to check the box to enable the New Relic module, and provide the ingest license key that we copied earlier.
After that, you can provide a descriptive name to the application, which will be displayed in the New Relic dashboard.
Once you have configured all of the settings, click “Update” to save the settings.
If you want to monitor multiple PHP versions, you will need to repeat the previous step for each PHP installation.
After you have added the license key to all of the PHP versions, you will need to launch the newrelic/php-daemon container – just click on the “…” button next to it and click “Add to Stack“.
After you have made the above changes, click “Deploy” to save the changes. This will install the necessary modules and containers required to monitor your web applications. After a few minutes, your server will automatically start sending metrics to New Relic. You can go to the “APM & Services” tab in New Relic to view your application.
If you are using WordPress, you can even check how often each WordPress hook is executed and how long it takes, as well as an option to monitor plugins and themes.
You can also take a look at the “Browser” tab to get useful metrics such as core web vitals, error rate, and the most frequent error messages on your site.
