Sentry Performance Monitoring

Spans

Create Child Spans

const transaction = Sentry.startTransaction({ name: "checkout" });

const validationSpan = transaction.startChild({
  op: "validation",
  description: "Validate cart items",
});
await validateCart(cart);
validationSpan.finish();

const paymentSpan = transaction.startChild({
  op: "payment",
  description: "Process payment",
});
await processPayment(payment);
paymentSpan.finish();

transaction.finish();

Span Data

const span = transaction.startChild({
  op: "db.query",
  description: "SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = ?",
  data: {
    "db.system": "postgresql",
    "db.name": "production",
  },
});

Distributed Tracing

Propagate Trace Context

// Frontend
Sentry.init({
  integrations: [
    Sentry.browserTracingIntegration({
      tracePropagationTargets: [
        "localhost",
        /^https:\/\/api\.yoursite\.com/,
      ],
    }),
  ],
});

// This automatically adds sentry-trace and baggage headers

Backend Continuation

// Express.js
import * as Sentry from "@sentry/node";

app.use(Sentry.Handlers.requestHandler());
app.use(Sentry.Handlers.tracingHandler());

// The transaction is automatically continued from incoming headers

Sampling

Static Sampling

Sentry.init({
  tracesSampleRate: 0.1, // 10% of transactions
});

Dynamic Sampling

Sentry.init({
  tracesSampler: (samplingContext) => {
    // Always sample errors
    if (samplingContext.parentSampled !== undefined) {
      return samplingContext.parentSampled;
    }

    // High priority endpoints
    if (samplingContext.name.includes("/checkout")) {
      return 1.0;
    }

    // Don't sample health checks
    if (samplingContext.name.includes("/health")) {
      return 0;
    }

    // Default rate
    return 0.1;
  },
});

Web Vitals

// Automatically captured with browserTracingIntegration
// LCP, FID, CLS, FCP, TTFB

Sentry.init({
  integrations: [
    Sentry.browserTracingIntegration({
      enableLongTask: true, // Track long tasks
    }),
  ],
});

Custom Metrics

// Capture custom metrics
Sentry.metrics.increment("button_clicked", 1, {
  tags: { button: "checkout" },
});

Sentry.metrics.distribution("cart_value", cart.total, {
  unit: "dollar",
  tags: { currency: "USD" },
});

Sentry.metrics.gauge("active_users", activeCount);

Sentry.metrics.set("unique_visitors", visitorId);

Profiling

// Node.js
import * as Sentry from "@sentry/node";
import { nodeProfilingIntegration } from "@sentry/profiling-node";

Sentry.init({
  dsn: "...",
  integrations: [nodeProfilingIntegration()],
  tracesSampleRate: 1.0,
  profilesSampleRate: 1.0,
});

Best Practices

1. Start with low sample rates, increase as needed
2. Use dynamic sampling for important transactions
3. Propagate trace context to all services
4. Add meaningful span descriptions
5. Track business-critical user flows
6. Use custom metrics for business KPIs
7. Enable profiling for performance-critical code