Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Observability is the practice of equipping software and infrastructure with tools capable of gathering actionable data showing not only when an application error or issue occurs but why it occurred. Most traditional monitoring tools gather information passively; observability practices are different. They focus on actively gathering relevant data, especially factors driving operational decisions and actions.

Organizations all over the world have been moving workloads to the cloud. Microsoft Azure provides a host of benefits and services which make it a top choice for on-premises to cloud migrations. When it comes to migrating workloads, Azure virtual machines are a great choice with VM options up to 416 vCPUs and 12 TB of memory and storage IOPS up to 3.7 million.

We’ve heard a lot about hyperscalers over the last several years as public cloud adoption began to rise. Now, they’ve become a central part of global IT infrastructure and essential to operations. There are many reasons to choose a hyperscaler as your cloud provider, so let’s take a closer look at what a hyperscaler is and how it can be leveraged for your organization.

Organizations large and small are taking advantage of cloud computing. This can be as simple as leveraging Office 365 or migrating all of their business applications from a data center into the cloud. We’ve all been witness to the explosive growth of cloud applications over the past several years. When organizations start considering migrating business applications to the cloud, there are many considerations, everything from security, compliance, cost, disaster recovery, and more.

ChatOps can speed up organizations’ responses to user needs while relieving support staff of a lot of tedious activities. Many helpdesk or IT tickets are entered for routine end-user questions, such as finding out what hours you’re open or changing a password. However, organizations have also moved toward automating development and required operations through a process popularly known as DevOps.

Privacy and data protection remain essential priorities for companies of all types and sizes. More organizations realize they are accountable for any personal information they store, even with a justifiable business reason. While regulations like GDPR technically cover the personal data of European residents, it is wise to treat all customer data with the same level of responsibility.

No matter what roles we play, we’ve all been frustrated end users at some time or another. Sometimes it’s as simple as struggling to find the documentation we need, whereas other times, we’re sitting there doing nothing because we forgot our passwords and must wait for an administrator to reset them.

While IT pros know they need to monitor IT services, they also know it can be the most difficult part of their job. Traditionally, enterprises have cobbled together several disparate monitoring products to address all their monitoring needs – but there are often gaps. Within these gaps, issues are missed, and the possibility of proactive issue resolution becomes nearly impossible.

I recently attended a virtual event and heard the speaker comment, “Relational databases don’t scale.” To my ears, this is about as silly a statement as saying, “No one can eat 26 hot dogs in 12 minutes” right before Kobayashi shows up and eats 50. In my experience, relational databases scale when they’re placed in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing. Just imagine if Kobayashi was your data architect!