Why Bitnami Switched to Sentry
Bitnami makes it easy for anyone, from the individual developer to an enterprise, to run open source software on any platform. The dev team at Bitnami knew they needed error monitoring, but when their existing service provider couldn’t help them efficiently measure the impact of an error, they had to find something better — Sentry. Sentry has fundamentally up-leveled the team’s ability to track and understand errors, improving Bitnami code while saving both time and money.
For Bitnami this level of monitoring performance is mandatory. Acquired by VMware in 2019, Bitnami handles over 1 million deployments each month of more than 130 open source applications. If errors and issues aren’t monitored correctly, they could quickly get out of hand. According to Angel M. De Miguel, Member of Technical Staff, “Simply put, there was no efficient way to measure the impact of an error and take appropriate action with our previous tool.”
Simply put, there was no efficient way to tell if an error was important and take appropriate action with our previous tool
Several major factors, from being able to measure the impact of errors and cost of the service, helped them make the big decision. The Bitnami team recently sat down with us and shared some of the details.
The Breakdown
The other provider acts more like a log, while Sentry operates as an interactive tool to fix and improve code. Developers need this functionality to create a more robust monitoring environment. In general, the Bitnami team found that the service they were using simply did not provide enough context around errors. It was difficult for the team to understand the impact of the issue, and dive into the details on users, environment, and other key factors.
How Sentry beat out the Competition
Events and Users: Sentry distinguishes between events and users, which allows teams to clearly and quickly understand if an issue affects several users, or just a single user several times. This is an important feature to help evaluate the impact of an issue. Bitnami did not get the same level of granularity before Sentry.
User Assignment: Sentry allows Bitnami to assign issues to developers, so it’s easier to track progress.
Mute: Sentry’s mute options are much more advanced than the competition. Bitnami was able to mute the notifications for an error, but it continued appearing in the UI when a new occurrence appears. In Sentry, you can mute an error until it reaches a number of events or users, or even by time delay.
Issue Clarity: Bitnami found that relatively similar issues would spawn separate issues in their previous error monitoring tool, due to line changes or taking place in different environments. Sentry solves this problem, allowing you to merge similar issues into a single issue. The Bitnami team gains substantial value from the trending graphs on Sentry’s issues tab. Angel explained, “Being able to see the trends of several issues at a glance is invaluable. Now I can prioritize and resolve critical bugs before they become a show stopper.”
Being able to see the trends of several issues at a glance is invaluable. Now I can prioritize and resolve critical bugs before they become a show stopper.
Pricing: Sentry plans are much more cost-effective for high-performance teams. Bitnami reduced monthly costs by 50% after moving to Sentry’s Team plan. Additionally, Sentry has no user limit, a crowd favorite for the Bitnami team.
Daniel Lopez Ridruejo, Senior Director of Cloud Services added, “Sentry already integrates with every tool in our stack, and saves engineers from the headaches associated with manual debugging. Sentry has become mission-critical to the way we build and ship software.”
Making the switch to Sentry helped the Bitnami team filter the signal from the noise, allowing them to quickly address issues with the greatest customer impact at a fraction of the cost.