Transitioning Production Tests into a Synthetic Monitoring Solution

In June, the Test in Production Meetup took place in London, hosted by Intercom. Jonathan Hare-Winton from Spotify spoke about synthetic monitoring and its use at The Guardian. Synthetic monitoring is a technique that uses emulation or scripted recordings of transactions to create actions for monitoring production systems. It's useful when passive monitoring isn't enough, such as in cases where deployments are frequent and the system is constantly changing. Synthetic monitoring involves taking tests running in production and turning them into synthetic monitoring solutions. Key challenges include ensuring test accuracy, keeping noise levels down, building trust with the system, and managing potential performance effects on primary systems. The main focus should be on performing actions that will trigger passive monitoring to achieve effective monitoring of production systems.