Datadog Case Studies Building a large-scale, highthroughput platform with Datadog APM and Continuous Profiler

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	Building a large-scale, highthroughput platform with Datadog APM and Continuous Profiler Datadog

Building a large-scale, highthroughput platform with Datadog APM and Continuous Profiler

Datadog

Technology Category	Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Applicable Industries	Software
Applicable Functions	Product Research & Development Quality Assurance
Use Cases	Predictive Quality Analytics Process Control & Optimization
Services	Software Design & Engineering Services System Integration
Challenge	Cvent, a market-leading meetings, events, and hospitality SaaS provider, had to pivot their entire product roadmap strategy to focus on building a new solution for virtual, hybrid, and in-person events due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. They planned to launch their new platform, the Cvent Attendee Hub, at Cvent CONNECT, their annual customer conference, and host the event on it. This meant that its performance had to be impeccable, and they only had six months to deliver. Ian Schell, Site Reliability Architect at Cvent, was tasked with ensuring that the Attendee Hub could accommodate the broad reach and increased registration volume of virtual events, which can often exceed that of in-person events. There were many unknowns surrounding usage patterns and scale, because the product was completely new, and the number of participants could be an order of magnitude higher compared to some in-person events. Read More
About Customer	Cvent is a market-leading meetings, events, and hospitality SaaS provider, with nearly 4,000 employees and more than 200,000 users worldwide. The company has been delivering innovative solutions for over 20 years, enabling marketers and event professionals around the world to create engaging, impactful experiences. In 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic forced events into virtual environments, which transformed the industry and accelerated its digital transformation. In response to this, Cvent pivoted their entire product roadmap strategy to focus on building a new solution for virtual, hybrid, and in-person events. The result was the Cvent Attendee Hub, which was launched at Cvent CONNECT, Cvent's annual customer conference. Read More
Solution	Cvent used Datadog APM and Continuous Profiler to build and successfully launch the Cvent Attendee Hub under tight deadlines. The unified Datadog platform enabled Cvent to implement a culture of observability across the organization, and ship code more frequently and reliably. As they were building the Attendee Hub, Cvent used Datadog APM every step of the way to validate design decisions and identify areas in need of optimizations. At one point during the load testing process, APM helped Cvent engineers detect and fix a bug in their code that would likely have not been caught as quickly —if at all—with previous tools. In another case, the team leveraged the Datadog flamegraph, which correlates service spans with relevant telemetry on the same screen, to detect an ECS instance that was experiencing elevated latency. The team was able to quickly determine that the host was overloaded and that the ECS CPU reservation was too low—without having to switch contexts. This information enabled them to make an informed decision to size up the instance appropriately. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management

Applicable Industries

Software

Applicable Functions

Product Research & Development

Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Predictive Quality Analytics

Process Control & Optimization

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services

System Integration

Challenge

Cvent, a market-leading meetings, events, and hospitality SaaS provider, had to pivot their entire product roadmap strategy to focus on building a new solution for virtual, hybrid, and in-person events due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. They planned to launch their new platform, the Cvent Attendee Hub, at Cvent CONNECT, their annual customer conference, and host the event on it. This meant that its performance had to be impeccable, and they only had six months to deliver. Ian Schell, Site Reliability Architect at Cvent, was tasked with ensuring that the Attendee Hub could accommodate the broad reach and increased registration volume of virtual events, which can often exceed that of in-person events. There were many unknowns surrounding usage patterns and scale, because the product was completely new, and the number of participants could be an order of magnitude higher compared to some in-person events.

About Customer

Cvent is a market-leading meetings, events, and hospitality SaaS provider, with nearly 4,000 employees and more than 200,000 users worldwide. The company has been delivering innovative solutions for over 20 years, enabling marketers and event professionals around the world to create engaging, impactful experiences. In 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic forced events into virtual environments, which transformed the industry and accelerated its digital transformation. In response to this, Cvent pivoted their entire product roadmap strategy to focus on building a new solution for virtual, hybrid, and in-person events. The result was the Cvent Attendee Hub, which was launched at Cvent CONNECT, Cvent's annual customer conference.

Solution

Cvent used Datadog APM and Continuous Profiler to build and successfully launch the Cvent Attendee Hub under tight deadlines. The unified Datadog platform enabled Cvent to implement a culture of observability across the organization, and ship code more frequently and reliably. As they were building the Attendee Hub, Cvent used Datadog APM every step of the way to validate design decisions and identify areas in need of optimizations. At one point during the load testing process, APM helped Cvent engineers detect and fix a bug in their code that would likely have not been caught as quickly —if at all—with previous tools. In another case, the team leveraged the Datadog flamegraph, which correlates service spans with relevant telemetry on the same screen, to detect an ECS instance that was experiencing elevated latency. The team was able to quickly determine that the host was overloaded and that the ECS CPU reservation was too low—without having to switch contexts. This information enabled them to make an informed decision to size up the instance appropriately.

Impact #1	Cvent was able to achieve its observability goals, from frontend to backend, in a single pane of glass with Datadog's unified platform.
Impact #2	Distributed tracing and APM were particularly important to Cvent, and instrumenting their Java, Node.js, and .NET services was a simple and seamless experience.
Impact #3	Cvent engineers turn to Datadog whenever a performance question arises, and its unified platform enables them to troubleshoot with precision, resolve issues faster, and ship new code with confidence.

Impact #1

Cvent was able to achieve its observability goals, from frontend to backend, in a single pane of glass with Datadog's unified platform.

Impact #2

Distributed tracing and APM were particularly important to Cvent, and instrumenting their Java, Node.js, and .NET services was a simple and seamless experience.

Impact #3

Cvent engineers turn to Datadog whenever a performance question arises, and its unified platform enables them to troubleshoot with precision, resolve issues faster, and ship new code with confidence.

Benefit #1	2+ Weeks Time saved in the Attendee Hub development process with the help of Datadog Continuous Profiler.
Benefit #2	Hours to Minutes Decreased time to detect and resolve problems during load testing.
Benefit #3	28,000+ Number of participants who attended the first ever virtual Cvent CONNECT conference, which was hosted on the brand-new Attendee Hub platform.

Benefit #1

2+ Weeks Time saved in the Attendee Hub development process with the help of Datadog Continuous Profiler.

Benefit #2

Hours to Minutes Decreased time to detect and resolve problems during load testing.

Benefit #3

28,000+ Number of participants who attended the first ever virtual Cvent CONNECT conference, which was hosted on the brand-new Attendee Hub platform.

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Overview

Building a large-scale, highthroughput platform with Datadog APM and Continuous Profiler

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit