New Relic Observability Platform Cheat Sheet

Updated 2026-05-23

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New Relic is a full-stack observability platform that ingests metrics, events, logs, and traces (MELT) from across your entire stack into a single unified database (NRDB), queryable with its SQL-like NRQL language. It matters because engineering teams need a single pane of glass to correlate APM data, infrastructure health, browser/mobile performance, and log streams without context-switching between tools. The key mental model: everything in New Relic is an entity — an application, host, service, or synthetic monitor — and entities can be grouped, mapped, and alerted on through a consistent interface regardless of how the data arrives (agent, OTel, or API).

What This Cheat Sheet Covers

This topic spans 18 focused tables and 161 indexed concepts, 133 flashcards. Below is a complete table-by-table outline of this topic, spanning foundational concepts through advanced details.

Table 1: Platform Structure — Organizations, Accounts, and UsersTable 2: APM Agent Installation and ConfigurationTable 3: Distributed TracingTable 4: Infrastructure Monitoring and Kubernetes IntegrationTable 5: Logs Management and Logs in ContextTable 6: Browser Monitoring and Mobile MonitoringTable 7: Synthetic MonitoringTable 8: NRQL — New Relic Query LanguageTable 9: Alerts and Alert ConditionsTable 10: Workloads, Entities, and Service MapsTable 11: Dashboards and VisualizationTable 12: Errors Inbox and Change TrackingTable 13: OpenTelemetry and OTLP IngestionTable 14: AI Monitoring for LLM ApplicationsTable 15: NerdGraph API and ProgrammabilityTable 16: Pricing, Data Ingest, and Cost OptimizationTable 17: New Relic vs. Competitors — Key DifferentiatorsTable 18: CI/CD Integration and Incident Management

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Table 1: Platform Structure — Organizations, Accounts, and Users

New Relic's account model determines how data is isolated, who can see it, and how billing is calculated. Getting the hierarchy right before onboarding prevents painful data-access problems later.

Concept	Example	Description
Organization	A company signs up → one organization is created	• Top-level container • holds all accounts, users, and billing for a New Relic customer
Account	`Invoice processing prod` vs. `Invoice processing dev`	• A data silo within an organization; all telemetry requires an account ID to be stored. • Free/Standard editions: single account only • Pro/Enterprise: can add multiple accounts
Account ID	`1234567` used in API calls and agent config	• Unique numeric identifier • required for every API call and agent configuration
Full Platform User	SRE/developer who builds dashboards and responds to alerts	• Has access to all New Relic capabilities • primary billing dimension alongside data ingest
Core User	Developer accessing Errors Inbox and APM only	• Access to more features than Basic • priced below Full Platform User
Basic User	On-call manager viewing dashboards without creating alert conditions	• Free • can view curated data and some platform features but cannot configure most capabilities
Groups and Roles	`Developers` group → `All Product Admin` role on `Prod` account	• Users are assigned to groups • groups are granted roles on specific accounts, controlling access
Cross-account queries	NerdGraph query spanning account IDs 111 and 222	Distributed tracing, workloads, and NerdGraph API queries can span accounts within one organization.

Table 2: APM Agent Installation and Configuration

The APM agent is the fastest path to application visibility — install it in your runtime, set the license key, and telemetry starts flowing. Each language agent has idiomatic installation steps but shares a common configuration contract.

Method	Example	Description
Java agent	`java -javaagent:/opt/newrelic/newrelic.jar -jar myapp.jar`	• Attach as JVM argument • supports Spring Boot, Tomcat, Wildfly, and 100+ frameworks automatically

The rest of this section is part of the full cheat sheet

Table 3: Distributed Tracing

Distributed tracing follows a request across service boundaries, assembling individual spans into a complete trace tree. New Relic supports both its own trace propagation and the W3C Trace Context standard.

Concept	Example	Description
Span	HTTP request span: `traceId`, `guid`, `duration` attributes	• Single unit of work within a trace • spans form a parent-child tree representing the full request path

The rest of this section is part of the full cheat sheet

Table 4: Infrastructure Monitoring and Kubernetes Integration

The infrastructure agent provides host-level visibility across Linux, macOS, and Windows. The Kubernetes integration extends this to container orchestration, giving you cluster-to-pod-level observability.

Concept	Example	Description
Infrastructure agent	`apt install newrelic-infra` on Ubuntu	Lightweight agent that collects CPU, memory, disk, network, and process metrics from hosts.

The rest of this section is part of the full cheat sheet

Table 1: Platform Structure — Organizations, Accounts, and Users

New Relic's account model determines how data is isolated, who can see it, and how billing is calculated. Getting the hierarchy right before onboarding prevents painful data-access problems later.

Concept	Example	Description
Organization	A company signs up → one organization is created	• Top-level container • holds all accounts, users, and billing for a New Relic customer
Account	`Invoice processing prod` vs. `Invoice processing dev`	• A data silo within an organization; all telemetry requires an account ID to be stored. • Free/Standard editions: single account only • Pro/Enterprise: can add multiple accounts
Account ID	`1234567` used in API calls and agent config	• Unique numeric identifier • required for every API call and agent configuration
Full Platform User	SRE/developer who builds dashboards and responds to alerts	• Has access to all New Relic capabilities • primary billing dimension alongside data ingest
Core User	Developer accessing Errors Inbox and APM only	• Access to more features than Basic • priced below Full Platform User
Basic User	On-call manager viewing dashboards without creating alert conditions	• Free • can view curated data and some platform features but cannot configure most capabilities
Groups and Roles	`Developers` group → `All Product Admin` role on `Prod` account	• Users are assigned to groups • groups are granted roles on specific accounts, controlling access
Cross-account queries	NerdGraph query spanning account IDs 111 and 222	Distributed tracing, workloads, and NerdGraph API queries can span accounts within one organization.

Table 2: APM Agent Installation and Configuration

Method	Example	Description
Java agent	`java -javaagent:/opt/newrelic/newrelic.jar -jar myapp.jar`	• Attach as JVM argument • supports Spring Boot, Tomcat, Wildfly, and 100+ frameworks automatically

Table 3: Distributed Tracing

Concept	Example	Description
Span	HTTP request span: `traceId`, `guid`, `duration` attributes	• Single unit of work within a trace • spans form a parent-child tree representing the full request path

Table 4: Infrastructure Monitoring and Kubernetes Integration

Concept	Example	Description
Infrastructure agent	`apt install newrelic-infra` on Ubuntu	Lightweight agent that collects CPU, memory, disk, network, and process metrics from hosts.