When working with your data in New Relic, you may want to view aggregated data for an application across clusters, environments, or data centers, while at the same time be able to view each of your application instance's data individually.
Important
If you use multiple names for an app, the last name assigned is the least specific name New Relic uses to roll up the data. For best results to view both instance-level and aggregated data, set the order of your app's rollup names from most specific to least specific in your configuration file.
Roll up app data
Normally, when two instances report with the same app name, agent language, and license key, New Relic aggregates their data into a single New Relic-monitored app. You can also view data for the individual hosts and instances from the app's New Relic APM Overview page.
To segment your app in a different way, or to work with each instance as an individual app while maintaining the overall view of the data, use your New Relic agent's config file to give an app up to three different rollup names. New Relic will then report the app's data separately to each app listed in the config file.
For example, you might want to separate the data collected for your app running in development, staging, and production environments, but also have a common view of the app in every environment. Or, if you have two data centers running the same code, you could name one app EastCoastApp;AggregateApp and the second app WestCoastApp;AggregateApp.
Prevent duplicate transaction events
By default, an app with multiple names will generate multiple events for transactions (a duplicate transaction for each name). For example, if you give your app three names, that's three times the number of events for transactions.
To avoid duplicate events, disable collection for each of the duplicate app names:
- Go to one.newrelic.com or one.eu.newrelic.com > More > Manage Insights Data.
- Toggle data collection on/off for duplicate app names, then save.
Roll up browser data
When you use multiple names to report application data, any browser monitoring data from that application will also be grouped into multiple applications using the same configuration.
Important
Session trace data will only report to the first application listed. Other browser data will populate into each of the up to three applications, but session trace data will be limited to the most specific application.
Define app names from most to least specific
You can give each app up to three names, which New Relic uses to aggregate data from most to least specific. You can then use the New Relic UI to view data for each app name individually, as well as in aggregate for overall application performance. When doing so, the order in which you specify the app names is important.
Using multiple names | Comments |
|---|---|
Most specific | A unique rollup name. |
A shared rollup name to aggregate data in the New Relic UI. This provides more general organization. | |
Optional, least specific | An additional, shared rollup name. If used, this is the most general name New Relic uses to aggregate data into a single app. |
Name app instances via agent config file
The naming convention you use in your configuration file depends on your New Relic agent. Set the order of your app's names so that the first rollup name is the most unique.
The second and third names can be unique, or they can be the same. The second name is more general for aggregate data, and the third name (if used) is the most general.
Agent | Configuration file value |
|---|---|
C | Identify a maximum of three names separated by a semicolon |
Go | Set |
Java | Set |
.NET | Use any of the available options to name your .NET app. |
Node.js | Set |
PHP | Use any of the available options to name your PHP application. Use three names separated by a semicolon. |
Python | Set |
Ruby | Set |
For more information, refer to the configuration file documentation for your agent.
Examples
Here are examples of how you could use multiple rollup names for a single app.
Other options to organize your apps
If you do not want to apply multiple names to your apps, you can organize them with tags. This allows you to easily sort, filter, and page through them from their product index pages in the New Relic UI.
You can also set distinct performance thresholds for each environment with alert conditions and key transactions. These thresholds will apply to the individual apps, while the overall app will not have its own thresholds. The overall app will treat incoming data according to the threshold for the relevant enviroment.