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StrongLoop, a provider of Node.js solutions, has announced the general availability of StrongOps 2.0, a Node.js-specific application lifecycle management (ALM) solution that includes both monitoring and DevOps capabilities for Linux, Windows and Mac.
Node.js continues to gain popularity for the creation of “front edge” APIs that mobile applications use to connect to backend data to enable enterprise mobility.
Node.js is a software platform for scalable server-side and networking applications. Node.js applications are written in JavaScript, and can be run within the Node.js runtime on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux with no changes. Node.js applications are designed to maximize throughput and efficiency, using non-blocking I/O and asynchronous events. Node.js applications run single-threaded, although Node.js uses multiple threads for file and network events. The Node.js platform is built on Google Chrome’s JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications.
StrongLoop’s StrongOps enables developers and operations teams to troubleshoot performance and runtime problems through the development, test and production stages of their Node application lifecycle.
With the StrongOps DevOps dashboard for Node.js, users gain advanced application performance monitoring (APM) features as well as runtime debugging, process and cluster management, memory leak analysis, error tracing, profiling and performance monitoring.
“StrongOps allows us to profile our application in real time,” said Rick Waugh a developer at Finger Foods Studios, in a statement. “We can see and analyze our slow end points, monitor our heap and CPU usage. It is particularly valuable in load testing and production monitoring, allowing us to catch performance problems before they overwhelm us. I cannot see going into production without a profiling solution like StrongOps in place.”
StrongLoop said StrongOps helps companies that are running Node in production achieve maximum performance and uptime. The company said current tool-chains for Node are either immature or non-existent. Moreover, some of the existing tooling in this space does not run on Linux or Windows or, if it does, requires complicated workarounds to function.
New features in StrongOps 2.0 include cluster management to scale on demand with no application restarts, management of Node process to control downtime and hot deployments, improved CPU profiling and garbage collection (GC) stats to better optimize code, and memory profiling and heap dumps to identify memory leaks and code hotspots. The product also features new error reporting, secured monitoring with encrypted performance data sent across firewalls, and alerts and notifications of problems as they occur.
“Node API servers and apps are already in production at major corporations around the world,” said Issac Roth, CEO of StrongLoop, in a statement. “Until now there hasn’t been professional level tooling for Node like it exists for Java. With StrongOps 2.0 you can confidently put Node into production.”
A subscription to StrongOps entitles developers to technical support for Node core and modules, plus tools to create private registries and API servers. StrongOps 2.0 is available immediately. Monthly subscriptions start at $99 per process per month with promotional pricing available for startups.
Launched in 2013 and based in Silicon Valley (San Mateo, Calif.), StrongLoop was founded by engineers who have been contributing to Node.js since 2011. In fact, StrongLoop is the leading contributor to Node.js v0.12, the company said.
The company is funded by Ignition Partners and Shasta Ventures, and is advised by Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus. Node.js is used to create “front edge” APIs that mobile applications use to connect to backend data. For developers creating these APIs, StrongLoop offers an API framework with built-in mobile services such as push and geolocation. These services can be accessed via iOS, Android and HTML5 SDKs with a variety of supported connectors including Oracle, MongoDB and MySQL. StrongLoop runs on all major operating systems and eight clouds including Amazon, Heroku, OpenShift and Rackspace.
“Node.js, not Java or Ruby, is the language to use when you want to connect mobile devices to many different types of data sources, whether they be behind the corporate firewall or in the cloud,” said Kiran Prasad, senior director of mobile engineering at LinkedIn, in a statement on the StrongLoop Website. “Node is easy and fast for mobile developers who already know JavaScript. This means the same developer can code the front and backend of the application, driving up efficiencies and speeding up time to market.”