New Relic unveils eAPM to boost Kubernetes observability

New Relic has introduced eAPM, a new feature aimed at enhancing the efficiency of IT teams and improving application uptime.

The eAPM is designed to provide platform engineering teams with the ability to automatically discover and monitor all applications operating on Kubernetes clusters through an eBPF-powered APM agent, without the need for manual instrumentation. 

This service promises to offer immediate and thorough insights into the entire Kubernetes architecture across various runtimes, frameworks, and languages from the New Relic APM user interface. According to New Relic, this development is expected to save time for Ops, DevOps, platform engineering, and IT teams, ultimately speeding up the resolution of incidents.

New Relic's Chief Product Officer, Manav Khurana, noted, "Our research shows engineers spend 30 percent of their time addressing disruptions. At New Relic, we constantly seek every opportunity to increase IT team productivity across all aspects of their jobs. With eAPM, we dramatically simplify the process of Kubernetes performance monitoring. With just a few clicks, IT teams get full insight into all first and third-party applications in Kubernetes in any language, automatically. This translates to valuable time savings and issue resolution."

The eAPM offers several key benefits, including faster troubleshooting of incidents through AI-strengthened insights which allow for more efficient debugging by monitoring metrics, transaction details, and database performance concurrently. It also features a rapid deployment process that eliminates the need to alter existing code, thereby enabling immediate setup of application performance monitoring by automatically discovering all applications and services. Additionally, it aims to streamline monitoring processes by removing manual configurations or dependencies, thus making it cost-efficient by reducing tooling complexity and operational overhead.

New Relic's commitment to enhancing its observability capabilities in Kubernetes environments is evidenced by its acquisition of Pixie Labs. By integrating eBPF-based technology with Kubernetes metadata, New Relic has improved Pixie's capabilities to create an edge-machine intelligence system and contributed Pixie to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation as a Sandbox project. The new eAPM is described as a streamlined method that enables automatic metric collection through the Linux kernel, benefitting users through the use of low-overhead data collection via eBPF and the standardised instrumentation offered by OpenTelemetry.

IDC Group Vice President, Stephen Elliot, commented on the development by stating, "With the value Kubernetes brings to IT and developer teams, there is also increased complexity in workload monitoring. As the adoption of Kubernetes continues robust growth, observability platforms that automate the monitoring process and bring much-needed visibility to enterprises will be sought after. Customers have a need for this transparency as it will play a key role in enabling enterprises to truly unlock measurable business value from Kubernetes."

The New Relic Intelligent Observability Platform offers additional features such as Cloud Cost Intelligence, Pipeline Control, Security Rx, Service Architecture Intelligence, among others. The company has improved its platform with over 20 AI-strengthened innovations and new partnerships. These advances aim to provide comprehensive recommendations by integrating Retrieval Augmented Generation with customer-defined data and external sources, allowing users to make informed decisions and optimise business operations while managing costs.

Customers are invited to visit New Relic's platform to access eAPM as part of its broader offering, which includes over 50 capabilities, available internationally. The platform is designed to assist businesses in reducing disruptions in digital experiences by unifying telemetry data and offering predictive solutions for enhanced value and cost control.