If you have worked in any part of the application delivery lifecycle long enough, there’s a very good chance you have directly used or been a consumer of Nagios. For a period of time in the early 2000s, it was the go-to solution for basic server monitoring and alerts. Fast forward 20 years and you might be surprised how many organizations still rely on Nagios for mission critical workloads — although not without a fair amount of duct tape and super glue challenges.

Software engineering teams that adopt “as-code” practices, like using configuration files and automated workflows instead of manual configuration and tools, gain major improvements in velocity. But even companies that enjoy the success of as-code practices for development and delivery lag behind in applying them to operational concerns like monitoring and observability.