New Relic, Inc., the software analytics company, today announced general availability of a new service that provides the most comprehensive and advanced code-level monitoring for Node.js, one of the industry’s hottest frameworks that supports highly interactive, real-time applications. The New Relic service for Node.js framework will be broadly available to customers directly through its website and through strategic relationships with CloudBees, Engine Yard, Joyent, and Windows Azure, all which have strong ties with the Node.js developer community. New Relic made the announcement at its FutureStack13 conference, alongside a series of innovations in software analytics, mobile and web application performance management.

• With this release, New Relic delivers the only APM solution for Node.js where the user can view the overall health of applications from an aggregate response time dashboard and also drill down into code-level data.
• The addition of Node.js support also sets New Relic apart as the only SaaS solution with a single, integrated view alongside web and mobile application monitoring for five other languages, server monitoring and plugins.

Node.js, the Backbone of Today’s Fast and Powerful Applications

The Node.js framework enables web applications to be built using the traditional, front-end coding language JavaScript on the back end of the server, enabling the creation of powerful and fast applications. Retail e-commerce, consumer Internet, online gaming, social media and mobile app developers have been among the first industries to adopt Node.js – a server-side, JavaScript programming framework regarded for its ability to support large volumes of asynchronous events. Proving the popularity of the framework, more than 10,000 New Relic users have signed up to learn more about the service.

Some popular Node.js uses include:

• Chat applications that run across distributed devices
• Data streaming, i.e., real-time audio or video
• Real-time game playing with tens of thousands of concurrent users
• Powering API services for both web and mobile applications

New Relic Features for Node.js

Typically, the event-driven, asynchronous and non-blocking I/O features in the powerful coding framework Node.js can also present unique challenges in performance monitoring. New Relic has addressed those challenges through the creation of a customized agent - from the ground up - with advanced capabilities such as:

• End-to-end transaction traces
• Alerts and notifications
• Application maps
• Code-level diagnostics
• Database transactions
• Error tracking to quickly identify problem areas
• Performance visibility across the entire app, including third party APIs, web services
• Reporting for SLA, availability, scalability and more

Supported Frameworks and Data Stores

The New Relic agent requires no additional instrumentation for the most popular Node.js frameworks, which are:

• Express (2/3)
• Restify
• Connect

The New Relic agent also supports the following databases:

• MongoDB
• mySQL
• Redis
• Memcached

Supporting Quotes

“With Windows Azure, customers can build and manage applications using the languages and tools of their choice. We are excited to work with New Relic to help Windows Azure customers monitor applications based on Node.js as well as other frameworks so they can focus on building the best applications, rather than worrying about application health and performance.”
- Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft

“We’re excited to see New Relic extend their world-class APM solution to support Node. What New Relic is offering is a one-of-a-kind monitoring solution for Node.js. It’s truly a game-changer for the Node community.”
- Spike Washburn, Vice President of Engineering, CloudBees

“Node.js has become a popular choice for startups and enterprises to build innovative, high-performance web and mobile apps that scale seamlessly. With the addition of Node.js support to New Relic, our customers can quickly and cost effectively monitor, troubleshoot and tune their application performance in real time, so they can maintain the health and availability of their production apps running on Engine Yard.”
- Rob Walters, Chief Technology Officer of Engine Yard [or Carsten Puls, Vice President of Product Management, Engine Yard

“In addition to being the stewards of Node we are also one of the largest users of Node. Node is great for developing high performance asynchronous apps much more quickly and easily but when it misbehaves in production you have no idea what's going on. If you can't observe what the app is doing then you don't know when there is a problem. New Relic allows people in the Node community to quantify and understand their app performance and gives them the assurance of knowing that no matter how deep the problem goes, they can go with it.”
- Bryan Cantrill, SVP of Engineering at Joyent

“The fast adoption of Node.js is yet another signal how the app is becoming the center of all business. Its framework’s ability to scale and support thousands of concurrent users at a time is advancing real-time interactivity between businesses and their customers. Building an advanced management solution for an asynchronous framework was challenging, but now it’s an industry milestone and can help our customers be more data-driven and make better decisions as they build modern software.”
- Lew Cirne, CEO and Founder, New Relic

Online Resources

• Learn more about New Relic and Node.js on our blog
• Don’t miss our infographic here
• Check out videos featuring New Relic customers Mural.ly and Verbling, and our partner Joyent
• Read how customer Fiftythree's Node.js app benefits from New Relic
• Learn about all the FutureStack13 news at our blog

For more on FutureStack, including the schedule, visit futurestack.io. Follow @newrelic and the #FS13 hashtag on Twitter for the latest updates.