NodeSource Provides IT with Visibility into Node.js

Six Mistakes that Lead to Poor Enterprise Software Adoption

With the rapid proliferation of applications based on the Node.js variant of the JavaScript programming language, IT operations teams have found that many of their existing management tools suddenly have a blind spot. For the most part, the tools that IT operations teams have in place today were not designed to deal with JavaScript running on both the server and the client.

To address that issue, NodeSource today unveiled N|Solid, an implementation of the Node.js 4.0 runtime through which the N|Solid console can provide performance analysis of Node.js applications running on top of what NodeSource describes as an enterprise-class implementation of Node.js.

Chip Ray, vice president of product for NodeSource, says the single biggest complaint IT operations teams have about Node.js is that each application essentially drops another “black box” into their environment. Because they have no visibility into those applications, it is exceedingly difficult to resolve any application performance issues that might arise. N|Solid, says Ray, enables IT teams to profile CPUs with a single click, while giving developers access to heap snapshots that can be used to identify and resolve production issues.

Other capabilities include visibility into in-flight asynchronous event processing, visualizations of key performance metrics, and monitoring of Node-specific telemetry. N|Solid can also be used to apply policies that secure memory allocations to prevent unintended data exposure and unauthorized code from accessing the underlying system.

The degree to which manageability issues are holding back adoption of Node.js in the enterprise is debatable. Whether IT operations teams like it or not, developers are embracing Node.js as an alternative to Java, because it provides a simpler way for them to write code once and deploy it anywhere. The challenge facing IT operations teams now is figuring out how to manage Node.js applications that are only going to become more numerous in the years ahead.