5 Must-Know Tips for Monitoring Your Vercel Deployment

Vercel is a popular platform for deploying serverless applications with ease. It offers various tools to monitor and optimize your deployments, ensuring optimal performance and reliability. In this article, we will cover five essential tips for monitoring your Vercel deployment effectively.

1. Set Up Custom Metrics and Alerts

Vercel Analytics offers vital performance metrics for your applications, such as First Contentful Paint (FCP), Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). To get the most out of these metrics, set up custom alerts for when they cross specific thresholds. This way, you'll be notified when there's a performance issue and can address it promptly.

vercel.json:

{
  "alerts": [
    {
      "type": "response_time",
      "threshold": 500,
      "emails": ["user@example.com"]
    },
    {
      "type": "error_rate",
      "threshold": 2,
      "emails": ["user@example.com"]
    }
  ]
}

2. Monitor Serverless Functions

Serverless functions are a core feature of Vercel deployments. Monitor the performance of your functions by keeping an eye on metrics like duration, memory usage, and error rates. Use Vercel's built-in logging and monitoring features to identify bottlenecks and debug issues.

# View logs for a specific function
vercel logs my-function

# View logs in real-time
vercel logs --follow my-function

3. Utilize the Vercel Dashboard

The Vercel Dashboard is your one-stop-shop for monitoring all aspects of your deployments. It provides an overview of the deployment status, performance metrics, and project activity. You can also access the logs for each function and view deployment history. Familiarize yourself with the dashboard to make the most of its features.

4. Integrate with Third-Party Monitoring Tools

While Vercel's built-in monitoring tools are useful, you might want to integrate with third-party tools like Datadog, Sentry, and New Relic for advanced monitoring capabilities. These tools offer features like distributed tracing, detailed error tracking, and more. You can easily integrate them with Vercel using environment variables and API keys.

// Example of integrating Sentry with a Vercel serverless function
const Sentry = require('@sentry/node');

Sentry.init({ dsn: process.env.SENTRY_DSN });

module.exports = async (req, res) => {
  try {
    // Your function code here
  } catch (error) {
    Sentry.captureException(error);
    await Sentry.flush(2000);
    res.status(500).send('Internal Server Error');
  }
};

5. Optimize Your Deployments

Monitoring your Vercel deployments is essential, but it's just as important to optimize them for performance. Use features like caching, code splitting, and incremental static regeneration (ISR) to improve your application's load times and reduce resource consumption.

vercel.json:

{
  "headers": [
    {
      "source": "/static/:path*",
      "headers": [
        {
          "key": "Cache-Control",
          "value": "public, max-age=604800, immutable"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

By following these tips, you'll be well-equipped to monitor and optimize your Vercel deployments, ensuring that your applications perform at their best.