Datadog Case Studies Monitoring a Complex and Elastically Scaling Cloud Infrastructure to Avoid Performance Issues

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	Monitoring a Complex and Elastically Scaling Cloud Infrastructure to Avoid Performance Issues Datadog

Monitoring a Complex and Elastically Scaling Cloud Infrastructure to Avoid Performance Issues

Datadog

Technology Category	Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Applicable Industries	Software
Applicable Functions	Discrete Manufacturing Quality Assurance
Use Cases	Real-Time Location System (RTLS) Predictive Maintenance Process Control & Optimization
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services Data Science Services
Challenge	GameChanger runs a complex and elastically scaling cloud infrastructure hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to support its mobile and web-based applications. This environment includes multiple databases and services, each of which requires monitoring. Taking data from tens of thousands of sources, transforming it into reader-friendly snippets, and then pushing it to fans in real-time means GameChanger has to be ready to handle high traffic, heavy I/O and to troubleshoot issues at a moment’s notice. GameChanger first built its own infrastructure monitoring tools in-house from the open-source components Graphite and StatsD. These homegrown monitoring tools got the job done but at a steep price: they required an extra $1,000 of AWS resources and more than half an FTE’s hours each month just to keep GameChanger running. Read More
About Customer	GameChanger ( www.gamechanger.io ) produces a popular Android and iOS application used to record scores, statistics and more for amateur basketball, baseball and softball teams. GameChanger keeps score for tens of thousands of sports games per weekend, pushing real-time updates to fans online through texts, emails and its mobile application. The company runs a complex and elastically scaling cloud infrastructure hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to support its mobile and web-based applications. This environment includes multiple databases and services, each of which requires monitoring. Read More
Solution	Engineers from GameChanger’s infrastructure group were the first to suggest Datadog. Savino found that Datadog’s monitoring solutions did exactly what GameChanger was trying to do in-house, but in an easy-to-use turnkey solution, at a lower cost and with no dedicated FTE time required. Datadog integrated seamlessly with AWS, MongoDB, StatsD and the many other services and databases that made up GameChanger’s infrastructure. This immediate integration made the company’s switch to Datadog quick and easy. Setting up essential monitoring displays and custom alerts was similarly straightforward. GameChanger no longer had to rely on costly and time-consuming in-house solutions; it instead could monitor its entire infrastructure with Datadog. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms

Applicable Industries

Software

Applicable Functions

Discrete Manufacturing

Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Real-Time Location System (RTLS)

Predictive Maintenance

Process Control & Optimization

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

Data Science Services

Challenge

GameChanger runs a complex and elastically scaling cloud infrastructure hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to support its mobile and web-based applications. This environment includes multiple databases and services, each of which requires monitoring. Taking data from tens of thousands of sources, transforming it into reader-friendly snippets, and then pushing it to fans in real-time means GameChanger has to be ready to handle high traffic, heavy I/O and to troubleshoot issues at a moment’s notice. GameChanger first built its own infrastructure monitoring tools in-house from the open-source components Graphite and StatsD. These homegrown monitoring tools got the job done but at a steep price: they required an extra $1,000 of AWS resources and more than half an FTE’s hours each month just to keep GameChanger running.

About Customer

GameChanger ( www.gamechanger.io ) produces a popular Android and iOS application used to record scores, statistics and more for amateur basketball, baseball and softball teams. GameChanger keeps score for tens of thousands of sports games per weekend, pushing real-time updates to fans online through texts, emails and its mobile application. The company runs a complex and elastically scaling cloud infrastructure hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to support its mobile and web-based applications. This environment includes multiple databases and services, each of which requires monitoring.

Solution

Engineers from GameChanger’s infrastructure group were the first to suggest Datadog. Savino found that Datadog’s monitoring solutions did exactly what GameChanger was trying to do in-house, but in an easy-to-use turnkey solution, at a lower cost and with no dedicated FTE time required. Datadog integrated seamlessly with AWS, MongoDB, StatsD and the many other services and databases that made up GameChanger’s infrastructure. This immediate integration made the company’s switch to Datadog quick and easy. Setting up essential monitoring displays and custom alerts was similarly straightforward. GameChanger no longer had to rely on costly and time-consuming in-house solutions; it instead could monitor its entire infrastructure with Datadog.

Impact #1	GameChanger can build custom dashboards on the fly to monitor the company’s systems.
Impact #2	Datadog allows GameChanger to quickly find the root problem when performance issues occur.
Impact #3	GameChanger can look at the performance of a set of components individually and in aggregate, which is important for a website that has multiple tiers and relies on MongoDB, Redis, and several APIs.

Impact #1

GameChanger can build custom dashboards on the fly to monitor the company’s systems.

Impact #2

Datadog allows GameChanger to quickly find the root problem when performance issues occur.

Impact #3

GameChanger can look at the performance of a set of components individually and in aggregate, which is important for a website that has multiple tiers and relies on MongoDB, Redis, and several APIs.

Benefit #1	Going from zero to getting data in through Datadog took somebody a single morning.
Benefit #2	Within a day of elapsed time, we had data inputs and the first level of alerts configured.

Benefit #1

Going from zero to getting data in through Datadog took somebody a single morning.

Benefit #2

Within a day of elapsed time, we had data inputs and the first level of alerts configured.

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Overview

Monitoring a Complex and Elastically Scaling Cloud Infrastructure to Avoid Performance Issues

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit