Docker container monitoring

Docker simplifies, accelerates, and reduces the cost of deploying containerized applications, making it a powerful tool for modern development. Acting like mini-hosts with enhanced isolation, Docker containers bring extra security and enable the independent execution of application sets. However, their unique nature introduces new challenges related to network and general configurations. Since Docker containers share the host system's kernel and resources, a modern application performance monitoring tool is required to effectively monitor them.

Monitoring Docker containers is indispensable for maintaining the health, availability, performance, and security of applications within containerized environments, ensuring a seamless, reliable deployment process. With Applications Manager, you can proactively monitor the performance of your Docker containers, drill down to the root causes of issues, and resolve them in no time.

Docker container monitoring challenges that Applications Manager helps resolve

Manual configuration

The need to automate service discovery in Docker arises from the dynamic, ephemeral nature of containerized environments. As containers scale up or down in response to varying workloads, manually discovering services becomes impractical and error-prone.

With our Docker monitoring tool, all you need to do is enable the Docker Remote API to initiate discovery and monitoring of the deployed containers. Our automatic discovery and dependency mapping feature will allow you to discover all the containers and what's running inside of them and map relationships between containers, services, and their dependencies.

A lack of performance visibility

A lack of visibility poses a significant challenge for organizations, hindering their ability to ensure the health, performance, and security of containerized applications. Without real-time insights into key performance metrics, the risks of undetected bottlenecks, resource constraints, and potential security vulnerabilities increase within the containerized environment.

Applications Manager fills this visibility gap by tracking resource utilization metrics that indicate the workload intensity (light, optimal, or heavy) the containers are experiencing at the moment, helping you troubleshoot issues with the applications running inside the containers. Applications Manager lets you automatically visualize, track, and correlate key performance metrics like the container status (crashed or running), CPU usage, memory usage, disk usage, uptime, and network traffic.

Additionally, you can gauge the operational efficiency of your Docker containers by monitoring the active files, inactive files, cache, memory paging, and more. Our robust fault management capabilities allow you to receive on-time alerts, detect anomalies, narrow down to the source of issues, and automate the necessary actions.

The management of multiple container workloads

Some tools streamline container deployment and scaling, but they introduce complexities in monitoring due to the intricacies of managing containerized workloads. As containers may span multiple nodes, tracking utilization consistently across the environment becomes challenging.

Applications Manager simplifies Docker container performance monitoring by enabling container isolation for issue identification and by providing visibility into neighboring containers on the same host. Moreover, it ensures the seamless deployment of containers regardless of their hosting environment (be it AWS, Azure, GCP, or on-premises) and regardless of the orchestrator platform used (such as Docker Swarm mode, Mesos, or Kubernetes).

If you want to monitor only a subset of the containers present in your environment, our tool can automatically discover them based on any criteria of your choice (like the Container name or Container image). Additionally, you have the option to start, stop, or restart your containers in two ways:

• Manual: You can manually restart containers based on your preference, eliminating the need to connect to that particular server every time for performing the operation.
• Automation: If you want to save time and effort, you can opt for automation. For example, suppose you want to restart your containers every time there is a version change. In that case, you can automate the process with Applications Manager.

Monitoring applications hosted in containers

Monitoring applications running in Docker containers down to the lines of code provides granular insights into their execution, resource utilization, and performance characteristics. With our application performance monitoring solution, you can:

• Gain unparalleled insights: Improve your overall application performance by obtaining visibility down to the lines of code. Quickly drill down to the root cause of issues by visualizing traces, metrics, database queries, exceptions, and more—all in one view.
• Leverage distributed tracing: Gain end-to-end visibility into application transactions as they traverse through your containerized systems. Identify potential bottlenecks and latency issues across distributed components, pinpoint components with slow performance, and resolve issues before end users are affected.
• Eliminate performance bottlenecks: Pinpoint time-consuming methods, threads with high CPU consumption, and other components that could potentially affect application performance. Reduce the MTTD and detect anomalies easily with AI-based alerts.
• Map dependencies across the application stack: Obtain an overview of the health and operational status of the applications running in your Docker containers with Applications Manager's service map. This allows you to grasp how components are linked and to narrow down issues to specific hosts or external elements.

Resource contention

Resource contention in Docker occurs when multiple containers vie for shared resources (like CPU, memory, disk I/O, and network bandwidth) on a common host. This competition can result in performance bottlenecks, reduced application responsiveness, and ineffective resource utilization. As containers inherently share the host's kernel and resources, efficient management and allocation are crucial to preventing contention problems.

Applications Manager's capacity planning feature allows you to set optimal resource limits and thresholds, ensuring that containers operate within defined boundaries and preventing resource contention before it impacts the overall performance. Furthermore, our Docker container monitoring tool provides comprehensive reports that help you visualize the performance trends of key metrics.

By understanding the typical peak loads and associated time frames, users can strategically plan to accommodate the constraints of limited resource availability. With our ML-powered forecast reports, you can predict Docker container growth and utilization trends and allocate resources optimally.

Start monitoring Docker containers with Applications Manager today!

Applications Manager is an easy-to-use, affordable solution that provides holistic visibility into your modern application environment. The tool offers out-of-the-box support for over 150 technologies, including servers, databases, cloud apps, ERP solutions, and middleware. In addition to Docker container monitoring, Applications Manager provides support for Kubernetes monitoring and OpenShift monitoring as well.