Catchpoint Latest Release: Hercules

All of us here at Catchpoint are passionate about continuously innovating and improving our product to make our customers’ lives better. Part of this process involves regular product releases is – and this latest one, Hercules, is no exception.

A big focus area for this release has been improving the usability, quality, and performance of the Catchpoint portal and agent. In this blog post, you’ll learn about the new features, improvements to existing capabilities, and bug fixes included. It has also resulted in a dramatic increase in loading speeds of the new UI.

‍_This release is named after the constellation_ Hercules, from Roman (and earlier Greek) mythology. It is one of the largest and oldest known constellations, and one of the 48 listed by second-century astronomer Ptolemy.

Read on for more details.

Nodes Module (Preview)

First off, we're happy to announce the preview release of the updated Nodes module in our new UI.

Catchpoint operates a worldwide fleet of public synthetic test nodes that you can use to monitor your web-based applications. We also provide the option to stand up your own private nodes, called "Enterprise Nodes”, to perform synthetic tests from within networks that you control. Enterprise Nodes are a great option for testing your internal or pre-release applications, and for comparing network performance across your organization's offices and data centers.

The updated Nodes module allows you to manage and monitor your Enterprise Nodes directly from the Catchpoint Portal. In this preview, the module is now part of Catchpoint's new user experience, and we have expanded its capabilities.

When you go to the new Nodes module, you will be able to access both a list of Nodes and a list of Instances (individual machines running the Node software).) When viewing these lists, you will also be able to access and modify the properties of individual Nodes and Instances.

The new streamlined interface makes the process of activating new instances and Nodes faster than ever. We have also added helpful tips and cues to the interface, which can help ensure your Enterprise Nodes are configured correctly and, as importantly, have sufficient capacity to execute your monitoring and observability strategy.

Endpoint Monitoring: CPU And Memory Alerts And Other Updates

Catchpoint's Endpoint Monitoring solution lets you monitor your employees' digital experiences directly from their physical devices. A lightweight desktop application and browser extension capture real-time performance metrics whenever the user connects to a monitored SaaS Application. You can also run synthetic tests from Endpoint devices on a scheduled basis, providing continuous performance monitoring even when the user is not active.

The Hercules release includes many improvements and fixes aimed at making Endpoint Monitoring easier to use. One such improvement is the ability to generate alerts based on endpoint CPU and RAM usage.

Other Endpoint improvements and bug fixes include increasing the maximum number of Endpoints per test to 65,000 and a network Sankey diagram that now shows all network devices by default. There are also additional improvements aimed at making it easier to view and act on your Endpoint data efficiently.

ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana) Integration

We have an extensive list of integrations and we’re happy to announce that ELK stack is now joining our ecosystem of technical partners.

As anyone working with it knows, [ELK Stack](https://www.elastic.co/campaigns/stack-only-from-elastic?ultron=fao-stack-cloud-emea&gambit=Stack-ELK&blade=adwords-s&hulk=cpc&Device=c&thor=elk stack&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-Nva7YW98gIVzNvVCh2RewchEAAYASAAEgIOEfD_BwE) is a fantastic way to help process big data. It’s a distributed, free, and open search and analytics engine for all types of data, including textual, numerical, geospatial, structured, and unstructured. It comprises three open-source products: Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana.

With Hercules, we are excited to be introducing two methods of integration with ELK Stack:

Catchpoint pushes data to ELK Stack – This method uses Catchpoint's Test Data Webhook API to send data directly to Elasticsearch. Each time a Catchpoint test runs with the Test Data Webhook enabled, the results are pushed to Elasticsearch via a public-facing endpoint accessible over http or https.
ELK Stack pulls data from Catchpoint – This integration relies on Logstash to pull test data from Catchpoint’s REST API. Logstash dynamically ingests and transforms the data using csv filters, and then ships it to the Elasticsearch engine.

Once Elasticsearch has received the Catchpoint data by either method, you can apply visualizations and perform data analysis using Kibana.

Octopus Deploy Integration

Octopus Deploy is an automated deployment and release-management tool used by leading continuous-delivery teams worldwide. We’re happy to let you know that DevOps teams can now configure Octopus Deploy to register each successful deployment as an Event in Catchpoint. This adds a marker in the Catchpoint Portal so that you can see how changes to your application correlate with changes in the user experience.