Teams using the Phoenix Server or Phoenix Environment techniques have found little in the way of support from Application Performance Management (APM) tools. Their licensing models, based on long-running, limited amounts of tin, and their difficulty in dealing with ephemeral hardware, have meant that they are often more trouble than they are worth. However, distributed systems need monitoring, and at some point many teams recognize the need for an APM tool. We think Pinpoint, an open source tool in this space, is worth investigating as an alternative to AppDynamics and Dynatrace. Pinpoint is written in Java, with plugins available for many servers, databases and frameworks. While we think you can go a long way using a combination of other lightweight open source tools—Zipkin, for example—if you are in the market for an APM, Pinpoint is worth considering.
