In today’s post, we’ll dive into how we, at AppSignal, solved a daunting engineering challenge. Giving you a look into the kitchen, this post will show you how we tested a new database in production without having to worry about errors/downtime. Alright, let’s get cooking!

Setting up a proper monitoring overview over your application’s performance is a complex task. Normally, you’d first need to figure out what you need to monitor, then instrument your code, and finally make sense of all the data that has been emitted. However, with a few things set in place, and an APM that natively supports Ruby, it’s easier than ever to take this step. In this post, we’ll show you how you can do it too.

Regardless of the tech stack used, many developers have already used Redis or, at least, heard of it. Redis is specifically known for providing distributed caching mechanisms for cluster-based applications. While this is true, it’s not its only purpose. Redis is a powerful and versatile in-memory database. Powerful because it is incredibly super fast. Versatile because it can handle caching, database-like features, session management, real-time analytics, event streaming, etc.