Scout Blog

Stuff we think matters

Finding fast (but expensive) database queries

A database is a shared resource for a Rails application. A single misbehaving query hitting your database can slow down unrelated queries throughout your system. When we began running our own database monitoring against our apps, we discovered several expensive queries that weren't apparent when viewing individual web endpoints and ...

Monitoring GenServer calls with Scout

The latest release (0.3.0) of Scout's Elixir APM package adds the ability to monitor GenServer calls. What is GenServer and how do you monitor it? A short intro to GenServer If you're coming from a Ruby background, you've probably used Sidekiq or similar to do background work outside of the ...

Elixir foundations for Ruby Devs: transforming data

This is a guest post by Tomasz Kowal, a software developer currently working full time with Elixir at ClubCollect. He started with Erlang 6 years ago and is still amazed by the power functional languages provide. In his free time he likes tinkering with flying robots. Have you ever reached ...

DevTrace and the Art of Staying the F*** Out of the Way

DevTrace is a performance widget for your Rails applications in development. It sits unobtrusively in the corner of your page, just waiting to drop insight on your application: See stack traces, SQL timings, and more with just a click! This kind of insight is powerful. You can see how your ...

Monitoring Sidekiq Jobs

Teaser for a soon-to-be released capability: Overview metrics for all your background jobs Chart throughput, latency, error rate, and more. Detailed drill-down on slow jobs See what's making the job slow, identify N+1 queries, and more. Tech preview - want in? Background job monitoring currently supports sidekiq, and is tech ...

3 Git Productivity Hacks

Most Ruby developers use Git for their version control system of choice. Git is a wonderful tool that can save you countless hours of lost productivity and makes collaborating with others a cinch. Git's distributed nature also allows devs to work anywhere with or without an internet connection without fear ...

Java for Rubyists

The Scout Java Application Monitoring Agent is under active development and we have a few spots open in our alpha program. Email support@scoutapp.com for access. For many Rubyists, Ruby is the first language that they learn and perhaps the only programming language that they know. Ruby provides an excellent gateway ...

Git-integrated app monitoring

Tracking down slow code is about to get a lot faster. We're excited to debut our Github Integration for Scout Application Monitoring: With the Github Integration enabled, instead of seeing backtraces for slow method calls (>= 500 ms), you'll see the relevant code in our UI. This goes beyond the ...

An intro to the Docker Stats API

If I was teaching Server Health 101, I'd start with four key metrics: CPU Usage Memory Usage Network I/O Disk Utilization The approach for fetching these metrics on Linux hosts is tried-and-true (hint: look in the /proc folder). However, I was curious about Docker Containers: where do I access these ...

DevOpsDaysRox

Last week, I spent Thursday (4/23/15) and Friday (4/24/15) at DevOpsDaysRox . If you've never attended a DevOpsDays events - find your closest one here and signup now. So what makes DevOps Day special? First, you'll find an active community that prides itself on inclusion and making everyone feel welcome. ...

From MySQL full-text search to Elasticsearch

Migrating backend search technologies on a high-throughput production site is no easy task, but Vector Media Group was recently faced with this decision. With a popular client site struggling under the load of complex MySQL full-text search queries, they recently switched to Elasticsearch . I spoke with Matt Weinberg to ...

Understanding disk inodes

You try creating a file on a server and see this error message: No space left on device ...but you've got plenty of space: df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/xvda1 10321208 3159012 6637908 33% / Who is the invisible monster chewing up all of your space? Why, ...