Brian Lim, Claire Tischuk, Lennon Stewart, Victor Ye
How has Chronos assisted software developers?
Over the past decade or so, containerization has exploded in popularity as a method of deploying applications due to its:
- portability: developers are able to deploy applications in multiple environments without having to tailor program code; utilizing containerization ensures that applications will behave consistently across operating systems, data centers, and cloud platforms
- scalability: containers are incredibly lightweight; this allows for developers and organizations to utilize the resources on a single machine as efficiently as possible when adding multiple containers for different applications; containers also do not interfere with the operation of other containers
- agility: containers provide a level of isolation for applications within their computing environments, allowing developers to easily troubleshoot and alter code without disturbing the operations of the OS, hardware, or other application services; this promotes shortened software release cycles with rapid updates
- and resiliency: because multiple containers can run in isolation from one another, a single faulty container will not compromise the other containers
Although containerization comes with immense benefits, it can quickly become troublesome to effectively audit as the number of containers and microservices that one has to manage grows. This is where Chronos comes in for the assist. Chronos is an entirely free, open-source application built using Electron that provides powerful visualization tools for containers, Kubernetes, and AWS. Chronos equips developers with an organized, customizable UI that makes it easier to identify issues and troubleshoot problems through graphical representations of performance metrics. Chronos makes monitoring the health of your containers, whether they are based on a local machine or on the cloud, easier than ever. With its newest update, Chronos has only grown in its scope.
What does Chronos 9.0 bring to the table?
The Chronos team has taken the next logical step in its support of applications deployed on Amazon Web Services (AWS) by implementing support for Kubernetes clusters located on the AWS cloud. Users of Chronos are now able to monitor and visualize containers running in Amazon’s Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). EKS has rapidly become a popular choice for those that want to run Kubernetes on AWS without the hassle of managing the underlying infrastructure. As with any and all instances of containerization, it is incredibly important to monitor the health and performance of applications running in EKS clusters in order to to be cognizant of issues that arise before they become critical, as well as to optimize and improve the performance of both applications and the environments in which they run.
While Chronos has always been aimed at providing the best visual representations of data metrics since its inception, Chronos 9.0 also introduces the ability to monitor cost metrics through Opencost integration. Users are now able to see infrastructure and container cost measurements and allocations in real time, as well as projected estimated costs on a per-month basis. By providing insights into the cost of running applications, Chronos allows users to make informed decisions about how to optimize their AWS EKS spending and potentially reduce overall costs.
How can I get started with Chronos?
If you are interested in giving Chronos a test drive, head over to our GitHub page, clone the repository, and follow the straightforward instructions on our README. The documentation included provides detailed procedures on how to use the numerous features one can utilize in Chronos.
Where can I learn more about Chronos?
To learn more about the power of Chronos, feel free to peruse these other Medium articles written by members of our amazing team:
Meet Chronos: Now with AWS Monitoring by Tim Lee
CHRONOS: Application Health Monitoring for the Modern Era by Josh James
Monitoring Node.js gRPC Microservices with Chronos by Derek Lam
Introducing Chronos 7 — A complete health monitoring tool for microservices, Apache Kafka clusters, servers, and containers by Hannah Santoyo
The Chronos 9.0 Team — Website | GitHub
Claire Tischuk, GitHub | LinkedIn
