Table of Contents
Introduction
Businesses in many industries turn to MetricFire for one goal: to quickly set up hosted monitoring with an expert team. Developers everywhere ask, "Will setting up a monitoring solution with a free trial be worth my time?" How can you find the right monitoring solution for your use case?
This article will review some common monitoring use cases for online retail and ecommerce businesses. If any part of this article rings true for your business, click here to contact us. We'd love to support you as you find the perfect monitoring solution!
Top Monitoring Use Cases for Ecommerce Businesses
Ecommerce businesses allow you to purchase goods and services online. To run efficiently, they need a monitoring solution. Here are some examples of how monitoring can improve your business:
1. Website and Application Performance—Monitoring your web and application performance can show you if your site is running correctly and help you minimize downtime. You can also track website speed to ensure customers stay on your website long enough to complete a transaction.
2. Inventory and Supply Chain Monitoring—For physical products, monitoring enables you to track what is sold, what does not sell, how many orders you have, order status, and more. Monitoring your inventory empowers you to maintain steady sales and make profits. For more information on supply chain monitoring, see this blog!
3. Security Monitoring—Security monitoring allows you to protect your infrastructure from hackers and other security threats. It is a must for any business to protect sensitive data.
4. Server and Infrastructure Monitoring—Monitoring your servers allows you to monitor CPU usage, memory, disk space, and more. With cloud monitoring, you can ensure that your infrastructure can withstand large spikes. One of our customers, Slickdeals, decided to monitor their servers with MetricFire. For Slickdeals, monitoring was incredibly beneficial, especially on high-traffic days, such as Prime Day. You can read about their experience with MetricFire here!
5. Database Monitoring—Monitoring databases enables you to find bottlenecks before they lead to problems.
Using Telegraf for Monitoring
Monitoring for ecommerce businesses means you have more visibility and control over your entire infrastructure. We'll show you how to connect Telegraf to MetricFire to set up monitoring.
First, you need to run an MQTT broker. Then, connect this to Telegraf to collect and send metrics/events from databases, systems, processes, devices, and applications. After you have installed Telegraf, you then must configure an output. You can configure Telegraf to output to various sources, such as Graphite, Kafka, InfluxDB, SQL, NoSQL, and more.
Last, you'll need to configure Telegraf's MQTT consumer plugin. All you need to do is search for the inputs.mqtt_consumer section in your telegraf.conf file, uncomment the [[inputs.mqtt_consumer]] line, and uncomment the server line (default is localhost at port 1883). This blog explains how to do this in more detail. It walks you through the step-by-step process of configuring MQTT with Telegraf. Check out the official GitHub repository for additional configuration options for the mqtt_consumer plugin.
3rd party MQTT Brokers
Several MQTT brokers exist; to highlight one, HiveMQ integrates with MetricFire. To learn how this works, see the integrations page.
Getting Started with MetricFire
Getting started with MetricFire is easy! Sign up for a free cardless trial and reach out to our support! We can walk you through how to send your first metrics. If you have questions about monitoring, we'd love to talk with you. Contact us on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook, or book a call!
Conclusion
In this article, we explored monitoring for ecommerce businesses, highlighting key use cases such as website performance, inventory management, security, and more. We also introduced how Telegraf and MQTT brokers can help streamline your monitoring efforts and help you connect easily with MetricFire.
By setting up a reliable monitoring solution, you gain valuable insights into your business operations and protect against potential issues before they impact your bottom line. Whether ensuring uptime during high-traffic events or safeguarding your servers and databases, MetricFire is here to help you stay ahead.
If you're ready to take the next step or have any questions, please get in touch with us. We'd love to help your business thrive!
