Top Frequently Asked Interview Questions with Answer in NewRelic

Here are some of the top frequently asked interview questions in New Relic, with answers:

• What is New Relic?
  • New Relic is a software company that provides observability solutions for cloud-based applications. It helps engineers and developers monitor the performance, availability, and security of their applications.
• What are the benefits of using New Relic?
  • New Relic offers a wide range of features that can help engineers and developers improve the performance, availability, and security of their applications. These features include:
    • Application performance monitoring (APM): This helps engineers identify and troubleshoot performance problems in their applications.
    • Infrastructure monitoring: This helps engineers identify and troubleshoot problems with their infrastructure, such as servers, databases, and networks.
    • Synthetic monitoring: This helps engineers test the availability of their applications from different locations.
    • Log management: This helps engineers collect and analyze log files from their applications.
    • Real-time dashboards: This helps engineers visualize the performance of their applications in real time.
    • Alerts: This helps engineers receive notifications when there are problems with their applications.
• What are the different components of New Relic?
  • The main components of New Relic are:
    • The New Relic agent: This is a software agent that is installed on the applications that you want to monitor.
    • The New Relic collector: This is a server that collects data from the New Relic agents.
    • The New Relic database: This is where the data collected by the New Relic collector is stored.
    • The New Relic UI: This is the web-based user interface that you use to view the data collected by New Relic.
• What are the different types of transactions in New Relic?
  • New Relic classifies transactions into three types:
    • Web transactions: These are transactions that are initiated by a user’s browser.
    • Background transactions: These are transactions that are initiated by the application itself, such as database queries and file I/O.
    • External transactions: These are transactions that are initiated by an external service, such as a third-party API.
• How do I set alerts in New Relic?
  • To set alerts in New Relic, you need to create an alert policy. An alert policy defines the conditions that need to be met in order for an alert to be triggered.
    • The conditions can be based on a variety of metrics, such as response time, throughput, and error rate.
    • Once an alert is triggered, you will receive a notification. You can also configure New Relic to take automated actions, such as sending an email or restarting a service.
• What is New Relic One?
  • New Relic One is a unified platform that provides a single view of all of your New Relic data. It includes features for APM, infrastructure monitoring, synthetic monitoring, log management, and real-time dashboards.

What are the Important Metrices of NewRelic APM?

The important metrics of New Relic APM depend on the specific application you are monitoring, but some of the most common metrics include:

1. Apdex Score:
   • Explanation: Apdex (Application Performance Index) is a measure of user satisfaction based on response time. It quantifies how satisfied users are with the application’s response time. The Apdex score is typically a value between 0 and 1, with higher values indicating better user satisfaction.
2. Response Time:
   • Explanation: Response time measures how long it takes for an application to respond to a request. It is a critical metric for understanding the overall performance of an application. New Relic provides response time data for different transactions and components of your application.
3. Throughput:
   • Explanation: Throughput measures the number of requests or transactions processed by your application per unit of time (e.g., requests per minute). It helps you understand the load on your application and how it handles incoming requests.
4. Error Rate:
   • Explanation: Error rate represents the percentage of transactions or requests that result in errors. Monitoring error rates is crucial for identifying and addressing issues in your application code.
5. Transaction Traces:
   • Explanation: Transaction traces provide detailed information about individual transactions, including the time spent in different parts of the code, database queries, external service calls, and more. They are valuable for identifying performance bottlenecks.
6. Apdex Breakdown:
   • Explanation: Apdex breakdown provides a detailed view of Apdex scores for different transactions and components within your application. It helps you pinpoint areas that may require optimization.
7. Throughput Breakdown:
   • Explanation: Throughput breakdown shows the distribution of incoming requests or transactions across different parts of your application. It helps you identify which transactions are the most frequently accessed.
8. Error Analytics:
   • Explanation: Error analytics provide insights into the types of errors occurring in your application, their frequency, and the affected transactions. It helps prioritize error resolution efforts.
9. Database Performance:
   • Explanation: New Relic APM monitors database performance, including response times, query performance, and the number of database calls. It helps you optimize database interactions.
10. External Service Calls:
    • Explanation: Monitoring external service calls (e.g., API requests to third-party services) helps you understand how your application interacts with external dependencies and whether they impact performance.
11. CPU and Memory Usage:
    • Explanation: New Relic APM provides insights into CPU and memory usage at the application level. It helps you detect resource bottlenecks and optimize resource utilization.
12. Transaction Errors:
    • Explanation: This metric tracks the number of errors occurring within specific transactions. It allows you to focus on troubleshooting and fixing errors in critical parts of your application.
13. Custom Metrics:
    • Explanation: New Relic allows you to define and track custom metrics specific to your application’s needs. You can use custom metrics to monitor business-specific KPIs and performance indicators.
14. Transaction and Page Load Time Percentiles:
    • Explanation: Percentile data provides insights into the distribution of transaction and page load times. It helps you understand how response times vary for different users.
15. Resource Utilization:
    • Explanation: Resource utilization metrics include server-level data on CPU, memory, and disk usage. It assists in identifying server-related performance issues.
16. Transaction Fingerprinting:
    • Explanation: Transaction fingerprinting groups similar transactions together based on their characteristics, making it easier to analyze and compare transaction performance.
17. Web and Mobile Transactions:
    • Explanation: New Relic APM provides separate metrics for web and mobile transactions, allowing you to track the performance of different application channels.

• Response time: This is the amount of time it takes for an application to respond to a request. A high response time can indicate a performance problem.
• Throughput: This is the number of requests that an application can handle per second. A low throughput can indicate a bottleneck in the application.
• Error rate: This is the percentage of requests that fail. A high error rate can indicate a bug in the application.
• CPU usage: This is the amount of CPU resources that an application is using. A high CPU usage can indicate that the application is not optimized.
• Memory usage: This is the amount of memory resources that an application is using. A high memory usage can indicate that the application is not optimized.
• Database queries: This is the number of database queries that an application is making. A high number of database queries can indicate that the application is not caching data.
• External calls: This is the number of calls that an application is making to external services. A high number of external calls can indicate that the application is not self-contained.
• Log events: This is the number of log events that an application is generating. A high number of log events can indicate a problem with the application.

List of Terminology Used in NewRelic with their Explanation

New Relic is a powerful performance monitoring platform with its own set of terminology. Here is a list of some common terms used in New Relic along with explanations:

1. Agent:
   • Explanation: An agent is a software component or module that you install in your application or infrastructure to collect performance data and send it to New Relic. Agents are available for various programming languages, frameworks, and platforms.
2. APM (Application Performance Monitoring):
   • Explanation: APM is a feature of New Relic that monitors and analyzes the performance of software applications. It provides insights into response times, transactions, and errors, helping you optimize application performance.
3. NRQL (New Relic Query Language):
   • Explanation: NRQL is a query language used in New Relic Insights. It allows you to query and analyze data to create custom dashboards, alerts, and reports.
4. Synthetics:
   • Explanation: Synthetics is a New Relic feature that allows you to monitor the availability and performance of web applications and APIs by simulating user interactions.
5. Insights:
   • Explanation: New Relic Insights is a real-time analytics and visualization tool that helps you explore and gain insights from your application and infrastructure data.
6. Dashboard:
   • Explanation: A dashboard is a customizable, visual interface in New Relic where you can create and arrange widgets to display key performance metrics and data.
7. Alert Policy:
   • Explanation: An alert policy is a set of rules and conditions that define when and how you want to be notified about performance issues or anomalies in your applications and infrastructure.
8. Alert Condition:
   • Explanation: An alert condition is a specific rule within an alert policy that defines the criteria for triggering an alert. It includes metrics, thresholds, and the duration of the condition.
9. Entity:
   • Explanation: An entity in New Relic represents a monitored resource, such as a server, application, or service. It is a fundamental unit for organizing and viewing performance data.
10. Transaction:
    • Explanation: In the context of APM, a transaction represents an individual request or action within an application. Transaction traces and metrics are collected for each transaction to analyze performance.
11. Trace:
    • Explanation: A trace is a detailed record of a single transaction’s journey through an application. It provides a visual representation of the time spent in different parts of the transaction.
12. Error Rate:
    • Explanation: Error rate is a metric that indicates the percentage of transactions or requests that result in errors. It helps identify issues in your application.
13. Infrastructure Monitoring:
    • Explanation: Infrastructure monitoring is a New Relic feature that provides real-time visibility into the performance and health of servers, cloud instances, and containers.
14. Integration:
    • Explanation: An integration in New Relic allows you to collect performance data and metrics from third-party services, cloud providers, and technologies to provide a comprehensive view of your environment.
15. Kubernetes:
    • Explanation: Kubernetes is a popular container orchestration platform. New Relic provides integration and monitoring capabilities for Kubernetes clusters and workloads.
16. Real User Monitoring (RUM):
    • Explanation: RUM is a feature that allows you to monitor the experience of real users interacting with your web applications, including page load times, browser performance, and user interactions.
17. Deployment Markers:
    • Explanation: Deployment markers are visual indicators in New Relic that show when code deployments or changes were made. They help correlate performance changes with code releases.
18. New Relic One:
    • Explanation: New Relic One is a platform that unifies all New Relic products and features, providing a single interface for monitoring and analyzing application and infrastructure data.
19. Custom Events:
    • Explanation: Custom events in New Relic Insights allow you to send and analyze custom data for specific events or metrics in your applications and infrastructure.
20. AIOPs (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations):
    • Explanation: AIOPs in New Relic leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect anomalies, predict issues, and automate incident responses in IT operations.