Case Study: Switching to Retrace APM Saves Carbonite’s Development Team Valuable Time

By: Alexandra
 
Case Study: Switching to Retrace APM Saves Carbonite’s Development Team Valuable Time

Carbonite was looking for a tool to provide detailed log and error information in order to quickly and easily resolve application issues. Since signing up for Retrace, Carbonite has saved countless hours by streamlining their issue resolution process into one tool. Carbonite now uses Retrace in an application that is the front-end of everything that Carbonite does for its customers.

“Stackify helps me be better at every aspect of my job. It’s the best new tool I’ve used in years!” – Michael Paterson, Principal Software Engineer

How does Carbonite use Stackify to improve application performance?

Carbonite uses Retrace, Stackify’s application performance management tool for log management, error tracking and server monitoring. The powerful combination of these tools into one tool gives Carbonite insights they didn’t have before into their application.

Retrace automatically collects the details you need to quickly troubleshoot application errors.

Retrace automatically collects the details you need to quickly troubleshoot application errors.

Retrace allows Carbonite to quickly and easily identify performance issues all the way down to external calls, database queries, and even individual methods.

Retrace saves Carbonite’s dev team at least an hour a day by having one location to go to for all their error and log management needs rather than having to log into separate platforms.

“It’s all at my fingertips in one portal. Stackify solved the problem by having one centralized location to view log and error information regardless of which application it comes from, where it’s hosted or which environment it’s in.” – Michael Paterson, Principal Software Engineer

Get more intelligence about the errors in your logs with no code changes. Learn more about Retrace’s error tracking.

Carbonite saves valuable time by using Retrace to identify performance problems

“Using Stackify we identified a memory leak within 45 minutes of installation.”

“We had an intermittent problem with a few of our servers. We set up an alert with Retrace to notify us if memory usage went above 75%. Retrace sent us an email, we identified the memory dump and within 20 minutes, we figured out what needed to be fixed.”

“Without Retrace, we would have added 10s if not 100s of log statements in an effort to get some of the information that Retrace gave us with the push of a button.”

Learn more about Retrace’s alerts and notifications.

Retrace has been an outstanding addition to Carbonite’s tool belt. The ability to see detailed performance information without code changes has not only been undeniably and incredibly beneficial but necessary for Carbonite’s dev team to improve their application.

Why Carbonite chose Retrace over other APM tools

Carbonite initially started looking at log management solutions because their existing solution wasn’t cutting it. They had some apps that were writing to event logs others that were writing to local log files and still others that were overloading their inbox with emails. There was no good way to combine all that data, much less to get any qualitative information.

Stackify’s Retrace was intriguing for a couple of reasons.

  • It offered everything they were looking for in terms of centralized location to view log information, error management, alerting, as well as monitoring regardless of which application, hosting location or environment.
  • On top of all that Stackify was better priced compared to other competitors. Carbonite looked at five or six competitors and ultimately found that even ignoring price, none, other than Stackify, gave them everything they were looking for.
  • Setup and configuration were extremely simple. Stackify provides a very easy installer and scripts for use in Azure or on-premise.

Key APM Features for Carbonite

  • Single app-centric dashboard across multiple data centers, servers, databases, and applications
  • Simple installation with immediate out-of-the-box value enabled by smart defaults and auto-discovery
  • Combination of application performance management and log & error management
  • Seamless flexibility to scale up and down based on our environment
  • Contextual metrics, errors, and logs for easier application problems resolution
  • Real-time monitoring and log tailing

Who is Carbonite?

Carbonite is a leading provider in backup recovery and archiving solutions for small businesses and home users. Carbonite fuels continuity by providing powerful yet simple tools to help keep businesses in business. They build hybrid applications that span Microsoft Azure cloud in their private data centers. Carbonite’s stack includes ASP.NET, Angular JS, Azure Storage, SQL Server,

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