Methods to Measure Application Reliability on GCP

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To measure application reliability from a user perspective without making any engineering changes to it, the following options can be considered:

A. Review current application metrics and add new ones as needed: This option involves analyzing the existing application metrics such as latency, error rate, uptime, and availability. Additional metrics that can help understand the user experience can be added, such as time to first byte, time to render, and time to interactive. These metrics can help measure how long it takes for the application to respond to user requests, which is a crucial aspect of user experience.

E. Use current and historic Request Logs to trace customer interaction with the application: Another option is to analyze the Request Logs of the web application, which contain information about every user request made to the application. By analyzing these logs, it is possible to determine how the application is behaving from a user perspective. The logs can help identify issues such as slow response times, errors, and downtime.

B. Modify the code to capture additional information for user interaction: This option involves modifying the code of the web application to capture additional information about user interactions. For example, additional logging statements can be added to capture more detailed information about user requests and responses. This can help identify issues that are not apparent from the existing metrics.

C. Analyze the web proxy logs only and capture response time of each request: This option involves analyzing the logs generated by the web proxy, which can provide information about the response time of each user request. However, this approach may not capture all user interactions with the application, especially if users are accessing the application through multiple proxies or if the proxy logs are not comprehensive.

D. Create new synthetic clients to simulate a user journey using the application: This option involves creating synthetic clients that simulate user interactions with the application. By simulating user interactions, it is possible to identify issues such as slow response times, errors, and downtime. However, this approach may not capture the full range of user interactions, and the results may not be entirely representative of actual user experiences.

In summary, the two best options for measuring application reliability from a user perspective without making any engineering changes to it are: reviewing current application metrics and adding new ones as needed, and using current and historic Request Logs to trace customer interaction with the application.