Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

We talk a lot about intermittent network problems. There’s a reason for that. Many network problems are intermittent, which means that they are sporadic, and much more difficult to pinpoint and troubleshoot than constant network problems. Picture this: You're in the middle of an important video conference call with a potential client when suddenly your network connection drops, leaving you stranded and looking like a pixelated mess on the other end. Sound familiar?

In today’s digital world, software vulnerabilities have become a widespread concern. Cybercriminals are always looking for ways to exploit these vulnerabilities, resulting in devastating security breaches. That’s where patch management comes in. In this article, we’ll discuss what patch management is, its importance, and best practices to implement it.

If you’re using Azure Storage for your cloud infrastructure, it’s essential to control your storage costs to ensure that you’re operating efficiently and cost-effectively. In this article, we’ll explore the key strategies for controlling your Azure Storage costs, including using Azure Budgets, monitoring your budget, and optimizing your storage usage.

Question—when was the last time you purchased a new product and sat down to read the manual end-to-end before getting started? Ask this question to a room of 10 people and you’d likely get one or two hand raises, even though reading first could save you time and preempt many of the questions you’re likely to ask. Herein lies the problem when it comes to creating a SaaS product.

On-call management is a process for managing after-hours support. Cloud on-call scheduling tools allow self-service and mobile access. Multi-channel communications (email, SMS, phone, mobile push notifications and chat) ensure that the alert gets through. AlertOps sends rich alerts, so the on- Call support engineer has all the information they need to know.

An alert escalation can be triggered when the primary support engineer does not respond to or acknowledge an alert within the escalation policy time limit. Keeping managers and stakeholders informed during an incident can help improve confidence in the support team. Once an escalation policy has been established, alert escalations can be automated to ensure consistency.

Site reliability engineers can amplify their reach and influence across teams with Cortex in their toolbox. With the ability to define clear standards and drive progress, Cortex enables everyone at an organization to adopt an SRE mindset. Make sure to visit us at SREcon to learn more about how Cortex can serve as a single source of truth for your SRE team!

Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently announced the release of Amazon Linux 2023 (AL2023) as the next generation of Amazon Linux with enhancements to its already-proven reliability. Besides offering frequent updates and long-term support, AL2023 provides a predictable release cadence, flexibility, and control over new versions. It also eliminates the operational overhead that comes with creating custom policies to meet standard compliance requirements.

Mobile workforce is an unavoidable work trend in the future. Whether it is implementing BYOD at remote workplaces or managing unattended devices without regular on-site visits, mobility management solution will play an imperative role in helping enterprises control all company-owned devices while protecting data security simultaneously.

Last year, I wrote How We Define SRE Work. This article described how I came up with the charter for the SRE team, which we bootstrapped right around then. It’s been a while. The SRE team is now four engineers and a manager. We are involved in all sorts of things across the organization, across all sorts of spheres. We are embedded in teams and we handle training, vendor management, capacity planning, cluster updates, tooling, and so on.