Rails + New Relic: What does RPM mean?

Question

I just started using New Relic RPM with my rails app, and one of the metrics they provide is "Throughput RPM". I have googled everywhere and thoroughly combed the New Relic docs, and I cannot find ANY written explanation of the RPM throughput metric.

Is it "requests per minute" or "requests per millisecond" or something else? ** combustion engines and revolutions per minute make this impossible to find answers about in Google.

What is throughput RPM? Is a good number higher or lower, what are some average benchmarks, etc?

I'd greatly appreciate an explanation of this metric, thanks!!

Answer 1

The product name "RPM" stands for "Rails Performance Management" - which is an anachronism, now that we support Ruby, Java, PHP and .NET (stay tuned for other languages).

The suffix "rpm" stands for "Requests per Minute". Typically used to measure throughput, either for the whole application, or a specific Web Transaction (Controller Action in Rails).

Lew Cirne
Founder and CEO
New Relic

Answer 2

I believe Throughput:RPM means the number of http "Requests per minute" being handled by your web application/application container. This would give you an idea of the volume of requests moving through the app and therefore context to understand how well various pieces or components of your app are handling that load on the App.

Hope that helps.