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Why Canarytrace?

What you’ll learn#

  • What is Canarytrace
  • Key features

In a nutshell#

Canarytrace is a Plug’n'Play stack for testing, monitoring availability of web application from user perspective and measurement performance metrics ( web performance testing ) for shipping better software faster.

Web applications are tested with functional frameworks ( functional testing ) and by performance tools ( performance testing ). None of these approaches test performance and behaviour of browser.

A desktop or mobile device browser is a small infrastructure and has different performance and behaviour according on resources (eg. CPU, RAM) depending on the device, condition of network and by quality of web application.

The Canarytrace is first stack for in-depth analysis behaviour of browser and measure performance web application from end of user perspective during shipping software into release.

Canarytrace is intended for scenarios

  • For measure web performance metrics and investigate incidents during performance tests.
  • For measure web performance metrics and availability during problems and peaks on production environment.
  • To get real information about how the web application is working for the real user when the infrastructure is under load.
  • To capture initial incidents already during development or in a lower environment.
  • For front-end developers to fine-tune speed metrics and reveal opportunities for improvement performance and web application quality.

Our mission#

Our mission is to build maintenance free stack for analyse web application and web browser in a real-time. Browser and its processes are very complicated for everyone, there are many of them and our mission is provide evidence how the application behaves and how the browser works when simulating a real user.

We want to help developers, performance testers and DevOps build and test a new generation of modern applications better with maximum information about quality. We want to provide useful information about the availability of the application, about performance from user perspective and about processes inside the browser during a problem with web application.

Browser is a small infrastructure, which finally deserves attention, we believe testing needs a lot of and we are here to build a modern stack. A service and a community that everyone can learn and benefit from.

We’re solving the hardest pain points of web performance testing and monitoring availability from user perspective. We believe in this mission and hope that you will join us and Canarytrace will become a way for assurance of quality availability your web applications.

Who uses Canarytrace#

Our users are typically developers building web applications using modern JavaScript frameworks, performance testers ensuring quality under load and DevOps engineers deploy and operation of web application and their high availability.

Two editions#

  • Canarytrace Pro contains all features ans is useful for multiples roles in your company, e.g. Testers, DevOps, Productowner, Business etc.

  • Canarytrace for Devops is ideal for people from IT operations, because it contains ficures mainly for availability evaluation. It does not include, for example, performance audits etc.

Two modes#

Both Canarytrace editions can work in two modes according to usage.

  • Smoke is maintenance free and is intended for testing and monitoring landing pages. Canarytrace itself evaluates a lot of metrics and evaluates quality and availability.

  • User-Journeys is mode for testing and monitoring your web application from user perspective. Is useful for testing and monitoring user journeys. E.g. open homepage -> search product -> add product to basket -> buy.

Key features#

  • Analyzes more than 60 metrics: Canarytrace collection a lot of telemetry data from real browser (not headless) as used by the user. Plus traffic between browser and server.

  • Credible results: Testing and measurement is performed with fixed sources for the browser - there is no distortion of metrics. The results will tell you the real state your web application and the impact on your client.

  • Workload model: You can run more Canarytrace instances with different profile of devices, with different scenarios (user journey) and with different behaviour of simulated user.

  • Browser based performance testing: If is hard perform load testing your web application by traditional performance tools, for Canarytrace it's easy, because we uses a real browser. You can run a huge number of virtual users.

  • Live reporting: Canarytrace store immediately telemetry data from a browser. Be the first to know if your application is unavailable or the loading speed slows down.

  • Plug’n'Play stack: Architecture of Canarytrace is designed by IaC ( Infrastructure as code ) principles. Canarytrace and additional components are Dockerized. Very fast onboarding. Very fast deployment of Canarytrace - no lengthy deployment procedures. Deploying to cloud providers such as AWS, DigitalOcean, Azure, or your Kubernetes etc. within moments.

  • Maintenance free: In smoke mode only set list of landing pages e.g. https://canarytrace.com/;https://canarytrace.com/docs that's all. Canarytrace automatically analysing lot of metrics from every landing page.

  • Testing and monitoring web application during development: Due to the fact that Canarytrace is maintenance free you can testing and measure lot of metrics during development or during switching on new version of web application - early testing.

  • Check landing page every 1min: Canarytrace test and measure your landing page very often, e.g. every 1min or every 3min etc. Due to this, it catches a lots of errors. Very frequent measurements are useful for immediate and more accurate overview on initial state of your web application.

  • From user perspective: Canarytrace use a real browser (not headless). Thanks to is results such as of real world.

  • You will be first to know: You can define lot of thresholds or multi-thresholds from more metrics and event. You will be instantly notified when an issue arises or when anomaly is identified and at the same time you will not be overwhelmed by notifications.

  • With 5 µs accuracy: Canarytrace thanks to custom infrastructure measure very accurately. All results are reliable.

  • Hero Element: Canarytrace measure when exactly is displayed e.g. button, banner or text displayed in the user's browser.

  • Performance audit and Web Performance Testing: Canarytrace use custom implementation of Lighthouse and WebApi for measure web loading speed. We use an isolated web browser for every instace with precisely set resources. Canarytrace measure more than 60 non-functional metrics.

  • Integration with your tools: You can work with out data collected by Canarytrace and stored in Elasticsearch via REST-API.

Setting up Canarytrace#

Run your elasticsearch and kibana and setup them via Canarytrace Installer. Ready to monitoring in 1 minute.

Running on localhost#

For better expierience, non-stop monitoring and for production use. 👍

Running in Kubernetes#

Use Kubernetes CronJob for better experience, non-stop monitoring and for production use.

Dashboards with results#

And we are at final. Canarytrace continuously send data to elasticsearch and you can show results of all measurements in a kibana.

Starting Canarytrace is very easy, monitoring and measurement starts in a few minutes 👏🏻 Please contact us for demo.

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