Applications running in a typical data center are static entities. Dynamic scaling and resource allocation are the norm in AWS. Technologies such as Amazon EC2, Docker, AWS Lambda, and Auto Scaling make tracking resources and resource utilization a challenge. The days of static server monitoring are over. In this session, we examine trends we’ve observed across thousands of customers using dynamic resource allocation and discuss why dynamic infrastructure fundamentally changes your monitoring strategy. We discuss some of the best practices we’ve learned by working with New Relic customers to build, manage, and troubleshoot applications and dynamic cloud services. Session sponsored by New Relic. AWS Competency Partner

1. © 2016, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Lee Atchison, Principal Cloud Architect, New Relic
November 2016
Cloud Monitoring
Understanding, Preparing, and
Troubleshooting Dynamic Apps in AWS
ARC303

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3. Who am I?
29 years in industry
4+ in New Relic
(Architecture Lead, Cloud, Service Migration)
7 in Amazon Retail & AWS
(Built SW/VG AppStore, AWS Elastic Beanstalk)
Specializes in:
Cloud computing
Services & Microservices
Scalability, Availability
@leeatchison leeatchison
Principal Cloud Architect

4. We want better apps faster
Better
data center
Dynamic
environment
How do we use the cloud to accomplish this?

5. Better Data Center
Better
data center
Dynamic
environment

6. Cloud as a “Better Data Center”
Resources are
allocated to uses,
just like in a data
center
Provisioning process
is faster
Lifetime of
components is
relatively long
Capacity planning is
still important and
still applies

7. Why use a “Better Data Center”?
Add new capacity
(faster)
Improve application availability
(redundancy)
Compliance

8. Who is impacted?
Operations Better data center Development
Can I scale my server fleet?
Can apps run anywhere?
How do they perform in the cloud?
A data center is a data center…

9. Who is impacted?
Operations Better data center Development
Better data center
Faster application
launch / deploy=

10. How do I monitor it?
Similar to monitoring any other data center…

11. Monitoring an application
• Application & Application Microservices
• Server OS
• Hardware (virtual)
Typical Server / Amazon EC2 Instance
Amazon EC2 Instance
Server OS
Server (Virtual)
Hardware
Application &
Application
Microservices
BrowserMobile

12. Amazon EC2 Instance
Server OS
Server (Virtual)
Hardware
Application &
Application
Microservices
BrowserMobile
AWS Monitoring
• Server OS
• Memory / Filesystem
• Processes
• Configuration
• Application
- Latency
- Error rates
• EC2 instance
• Virtualization
• Hardware
• [CPU / Disk / Networking]
Amazon CloudWatch
Monitors
Doesn’t know about:
Amazon
CloudWatch
AWS
CONSOLE

13. Amazon EC2 Instance
Server OS
Server (Virtual)
Hardware
Application &
Application
Microservices
BrowserMobile
Amazon
CloudWatch
AWS
CONSOLE
DASHBOARDS
New Relic Monitoring
• Virtualization
• How O.S. is performing
• Configuration
• Processes
• Hardware
• App health
• App performance
• Microservices
New Relic
Monitors (Server):
Monitors (Application):
Doesn’t know
New Relic
Application
Monitoring
New Relic
Infrastructure
Monitoring

14. Amazon EC2 Instance
Server OS
Server (Virtual)
Hardware
Application &
Application
Microservices
BrowserMobile
Amazon
CloudWatch
AWS
CONSOLE
DASHBOARDS
New Relic
Application
Monitoring
New Relic
Infrastructure
Monitoring
AWSNew Relic Monitoring
• Visibility into virtualization
• CPU / Disk / Networking
• CPU / Disk / Networking
• Memory / Filesystem
• Processes
- Infrastructure components
• Application / Microservices:
- Latency
- Error rates
- App insights
AWS / CloudWatch
New Relic
New Relic
Monitors
CloudWatch
monitors

15. Dynamic Cloud
Dynamic
environment
Better
data center

16. Cloud as a
“Dynamic Tool for Dynamic Apps”
Use only the resources
you need

17. Cloud as a
“Dynamic Tool for Dynamic Apps”
Allocate / de-allocate
resources on the fly
Use only the resources
you need

18. Cloud as a
“Dynamic Tool for Dynamic Apps”
Resource allocation is an
integral part of your
application architecture
Allocate / de-allocate
resources on the fly
Use only the resources
you need

19. Allocated Application is aware of and is controlling
traditional OPs resources
Consumed De-allocated
Application in charge:Resources are:
Dynamic Cloud

20. Dynamic Usage Example…
Docker Container Age
(Count vs. Hours)
1 Hour
200 days 833 days

21. Dynamic Usage Example…
Docker Container Age
(by Minute and Hour)
1,200,000
11% under one minute
Container age (minutes)

22. Dynamic Cloud Technologies
Dynamic Cloud is about scaling
Auto Scaling
Mobile / IoT Dynamic routing
Load balancing
Queues and notifications
Docker

23. How do I monitor the Dynamic Cloud?
Dynamic Cloud has unique monitoring requirements…

24. What is a Dynamic Cloud Application?
• Application & Application Microservices
Responsible for the parts you care about
• Infrastructure
• Allocation/Provisioning
• Scaling
Let cloud manage rest
Server OS
Server (Virtual)
Hardware
Application &
Application
Microservices
Provisioning
Application &
Application
Microservices
Application &
Application
Microservices
BrowserMobile

25. Server OS
Server (Virtual)
Hardware
Application &
Application
Microservices
Provisioning
Application &
Application
Microservices
Application &
Application
Microservices
BrowserMobile
Monitoring Dynamic Cloud Applications
DASHBOARDS
AWS
CONSOLE
CloudWatch

26. Server OS
Server (Virtual)
Hardware
Application &
Application
Microservices
Provisioning
Application &
Application
Microservices
Application &
Application
Microservices
BrowserMobile
AWS InfrastructureNew Relic work together
CloudWatch
AWS
CONSOLE
New Relic
Application
Monitoring
New Relic
Infrastructure
Monitoring
DASHBOARDS

27. Server OS
Server (Virtual)
Hardware
Application &
Application
Microservices
Provisioning
Application &
Application
Microservices
Application &
Application
Microservices
BrowserMobile
CloudWatch
AWS
CONSOLE
New Relic
Application
Monitoring
New Relic
Infrastructure
Monitoring
DASHBOARDS
AWS InfrastructureNew Relic work together
New Relic
Monitors
CloudWatch &
AWS monitors

28. Server OS
Server (Virtual)
Hardware
Application &
Application
Microservices
Provisioning
Application &
Application
Microservices
Application &
Application
Microservices
BrowserMobile
How do you monitor this?
?How do you
monitor this?

29. Where did it go? It was just here!!
The thing you monitored 10 minutes ago…
...doesn’t exist anymore!?

30. Remember This?
Docker Container Age
(by Minute and Hour)
1,200,000
11% under one minute
Container age (minutes)

31. Monitoring the Dynamic Cloud
Monitor the lifecycle of the
cloud components
Monitor the cloud
components themselves
Very different than monitoring traditional data center components

32. Who is impacted?
Operations Better data center Development
Can I scale my server fleet?
Can apps run anywhere?
How do they perform in the cloud?
A data center is a data center…

33. Who is impacted?
Operations Dynamic Cloud Development
What is a container?
Why do I care??
It was just here, where did it go??
Cloud architecture is integral to the
application architecture
*
Developers deeply involved in cloud
activities

34. Changing World
Previous - STATIC World
Ops

35. Changing World
Previous - STATIC World
Ops
Dev
Now - DYNAMIC World
Ops

36. Change is speeding up
Traditional data center Cloud data center Dynamic Cloud
Dynamic Cloud enables better applications faster.
Good Better Best
The way you’ve done things in the past
won’t work in the future.

37. Dynamic Cloud
Process running
a command
Things happen faster because of…
This is
HARD
Amazon EC2 Docker container
Server running
application/ processes

38. Dynamic Cloud
Server running
application/ processes
Things happen faster because of…
Amazon EC2 Docker container
Function performing
a task or operation
AWS Lambda
Process running
a command

39. The Future with Lambda

40. Microcomputing & AWS Lambda
• Newest entrance to the “dynamic cloud”
• Provides event driven compute capabilities
• No infrastructure to provision
• Massively shared infrastructure

41. Why use Lambda?
Run in response to a
state change or action
in the cloud
Stateless, “filters”
Perform quick actions
Virtually no
startup/shutdown cost
Lambda scripts

42. AWS Lambda
• Takes an event from an AWS
resource (a trigger) S3
Bucket
API
Gateway
SQS
RESOURCESSOME
DynamoDB

43. AWS Lambda
Lambda
Script
• Takes an event from an AWS
resource (a trigger)
• Creates an instance
to execute
Lambda
Instance
S3
Bucket
API
Gateway
SQS
RESOURCESSOME
DynamoDB

44. AWS Lambda
Lambda
Script
• Takes an event from an AWS
resource (a trigger)
• Creates an instance
to execute
• Can impact original or
different AWS resource
Lambda
Instance
S3
Bucket
DynamoDB
API
Gateway
SQS
RESOURCESSOME
S3
Bucket
API
Gateway SQS
RESOURCESSOME

45. AWS Lambda
Lambda
Script
Lambda
instances
• Takes an event from an AWS
resource (a trigger)
• Creates an instance
to execute
• Can impact original or
different AWS resource
• Any number of instances can
run at a time
S3
Bucket
API
Gateway
SQS
RESOURCESSOME
S3
Bucket
API
Gateway SQS
RESOURCESSOME
DynamoDB

46. Lambda example #1
Photo Management App

47. Photo management application
Upload
File• Photos uploaded to S3
S3 Bucket
Image
Import
User

48. Photo management application
Upload
File
S3 Bucket
Image
Thumbnails
View
Thumbnail
• Photos uploaded to S3
• Lambda script creates thumbnails
S3 Bucket
Image
Import
Lambda
Script
User

49. Photo management application
Image
Database
Upload
File
S3 Bucket
Image
Thumbnails
Lambda
Script
View
Thumbnail
Lambda
Script
• Photos uploaded to S3
• Lambda script creates thumbnails
• Lambda script updates metadata in
database
S3 Bucket
Image
Import
User

50. Photo management application
Application
Upload
File
S3 Bucket
Image
Thumbnails
App
Interactions
View
Thumbnail
Lambda
Script
• Photos uploaded to S3
• Lambda script creates thumbnails
• Lambda script updates metadata in
database
• Application only has
to deal with metadata editing, not
photo / file management
User
Image
Database
S3 Bucket
Image
Import
Lambda
Script

51. Lambda example #2
Mobile Game App

52. Mobile game platform
• Cloud platform hosts an
API for mobile app
- API Gateway
• Lambda scripts implement the API
• Lambda scripts manipulate database
• Extremely high scale possible
- No infrastructure
API
Gateway
Lambda
Script
Lambda
Script
Lambda
Script
Mobile Phone
Application Users
DatabaseDatabase

53. Monitoring Lambda Scripts
Less like infrastructure monitoring /
More like web application monitoring
We Care About We Don’t Care About
• Run time
(average, extremes – TP90/TP99)
• Statistical metrics
• Error rates and other deviations
from norm
• “Drill down” into individual “runs”
• Details about all ”runs”
• Server / infrastructure metrics

54. Monitoring Lambda
More like application performance monitoring than infrastructure monitoring

55. Monitoring Lambda
More like application performance monitoring than infrastructure monitoring

56. Change is speeding up
Dynamic Cloud enables better applications faster.
Good Better Best
The way you’ve done things in the past
won’t work in the future.
Traditional data center Cloud data center Dynamic Cloud

57. EC2 Instance
Server OS
Server (Virtual)
Hardware
Application &
Application
Microservices
Monitoring just the server
Worked when the rate of change was low…
CloudWatch
AWS
CONSOLE

58. Monitoring just the server
• Rate of change is faster
• Problems come up quicker
• “Server” isn’t a server anymore
• “Provisioning” isn’t provisioning anymore
Insufficient in the cloud:
• Top to bottom monitoring…
• Full stack accountability...
• Dynamic infrastructure control...
You need:
Server OS
Server (Virtual)
Hardware
Application &
Application
Microservices
Provisioning
Application &
Application
Microservices
Application &
Application
Microservices
BrowserMobile

59. New Relic enables accountability
between your code & AWS
Customers
On-Premises On Premises
Relational Data
RDS
Synthetic
Customers
S3
Service API
EC2
NoSQL
Browser / Mobile / Apps
Data Driven Digital Business
Customer Experience Mgmt Application Performance Mgmt Dynamic Infrastructure Mgmt

60. Thank you!

61. Architecting for Scale
By: Lee Atchison
Published by: O’Reilly Media
www.ArchitectingForScale.com
leeatchison@leeatchison
Stop by the New Relic Booth!
Booth #610
Thursday – 11:20am
• Book signing
• Free copies of the book