Application Monitoring with Sentry

Introduction

In the context of the openIMIS Sandbox setup project, managing application bugs and exceptions at scale is a critical challenge. With thousands of users interacting with the system across different environments, errors can emerge from a wide variety of user scenarios. Without a centralized monitoring solution, identifying, reproducing, and fixing these issues becomes slow and inefficient.

Sentry is an open-source application monitoring platform designed to provide real-time bug tracking and detailed error reporting. It enables developers to capture:

• The full log trace of an error.

• The execution context leading to the crash.

• The user session and environment in which the error occurred.

• Tools for assigning and tracking bugs across development teams.

By deploying Sentry in the Sandbox environment, we create a controlled setup for monitoring bugs and exceptions in backend, frontend, mobile and API interactions.

Current Status in openIMIS

• A basic Sentry configuration already exists at the backend level of openIMIS.

• The next step is to implement a complete deployment of the Sentry Community Edition within the openIMIS Sandbox Server.

• This deployment ensures monitoring capabilities that are:

  • Close to the running server (low latency).

  • Data sovereign (logs remain within the implementation country infrastructure).

  • Independent from external SaaS providers (compliance with privacy/security requirements).

Deployment Objectives

1. Full Sentry Community Edition Deployment

   • Set up Docker-based deployment of Sentry CE in the sandbox server.

   • Configure ingestion from openIMIS backend, frontend, and related services.

   • Secure the deployment (SSL, user roles, access control).

2. Integration with openIMIS

   • Extend backend and frontend clients to send exception events.

   • Tag errors by environment (dev, demo, production-like).

   • Map errors to developer teams/modules for efficient bug attribution.

3. Monitoring & Reporting

   • Provide real-time dashboards of exception rates.

   • Enable notification channels (email, discord).

   • Configure retention and anonymization policies to comply with data governance.

Considerations

• Performance & Resource Use:
  Sentry CE is a heavy application (multiple services: Kafka, Redis, Postgres, Clickhouse). Running it in production requires dedicated resources.

• Alternatives for Lightweight Monitoring:
  In environments where Sentry CE is too resource-intensive, lighter open-source options can be considered:

  • GlitchTip – a community-maintained lightweight alternative to Sentry, fully compatible with the Sentry SDKs.

  • Elastic APM (Application Performance Monitoring) – part of the Elastic stack, providing error and performance monitoring.

These alternatives may reduce operational complexity while still providing sufficient error tracking capabilities for medium-scale openIMIS deployments.