Migrating from New Relic to Uptrace

Assess Your Current Setup

Before migrating, take inventory of your current New Relic setup:

• APM Services: List all applications monitored by New Relic APM.
• Custom Instrumentation: Identify any manually added instrumentation.
• Logs & Metrics: Document important logs, metrics, and alerting rules.
• Dashboards & NRQL Queries: Note any NRQL-based queries you need to migrate.

Set Up Uptrace

Start by setting up Uptrace using either the cloud or self-hosted option:

• Cloud-Hosted Option: Sign up for Uptrace Cloud
• Self-Hosted Option: Install Uptrace on your infrastructure

Replace New Relic APM with OpenTelemetry

Install OpenTelemetry SDKs

Replace New Relic’s agent with OpenTelemetry SDKs in your application:

Migrate Metrics & Logs

Metrics

Convert New Relic metric collection to OpenTelemetry exporters. Choose the method that best fits your setup:

• OpenTelemetry SDK – Directly instrument your application to send metrics.
• OpenTelemetry Collector – Aggregate and process metrics before exporting.
• Prometheus – Use Prometheus for metric collection and export to Uptrace.
• AWS CloudWatch – Route CloudWatch metrics into Uptrace.

Prometheus Example

pip install opentelemetry-exporter-prometheus

from opentelemetry.exporter.prometheus import PrometheusMetricsExporter
exporter = PrometheusMetricsExporter()

For a complete list of supported ingestion methods, refer to the Uptrace ingestion guide.

Logs

To migrate logs from New Relic, send them to Uptrace using one of these methods:

• OpenTelemetry SDK – Log directly from your application.
• Vector – Collect and forward logs.
• FluentBit – Lightweight logging pipeline for exporting logs.
• Loki – Use Grafana Loki to manage logs.

Example (Fluent Bit)

[OUTPUT]
    Name  http
    Match *
    Host  uptrace-host
    Port  4318

For more details, check out our guide about monitoring logs with Uptrace.

Convert NRQL Queries to PromQL

New Relic Query Language (NRQL) is specific to New Relic. Convert your queries to PromQL for use with Uptrace.

Example Conversion

NRQL

SELECT average(duration) FROM Transaction WHERE appName = 'my-app'

PromQL

avg(rate(http_request_duration_seconds[5m]))

Migrate Dashboards

Recreate important dashboards in Uptrace based on migrated metrics and traces.

Update Alerting Rules

Migrate alert conditions from New Relic to Uptrace using PromQL-based alerts.

Test and Validate

• Compare data in New Relic vs. Uptrace.
• Ensure all traces, logs, and metrics are correctly ingested.
• Validate dashboards and alert rules.

Decommission New Relic

Once you confirm everything is running smoothly in Uptrace, disable New Relic agents and stop its services.

Conclusion

Migrating from New Relic to Uptrace allows you to leverage an OpenTelemetry-native observability platform that is cost-effective, open-source, and highly flexible. By following this step-by-step migration guide, you can seamlessly transition while maintaining full monitoring and visibility into your infrastructure and applications.

Following these steps ensures a smooth transition from New Relic to Uptrace, leveraging OpenTelemetry for flexible and cost-effective observability.