Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

The latest News and Information on Monitoring for Websites, Applications, APIs, Infrastructure, and other technologies.

An Introduction to OpenTelemetry and Observability

Cloud native and microservice architectures bring many advantages in terms of performance, scalability, and reliability, but one thing they can also bring is complexity. Having requests move between services can make debugging much more challenging and many of the past rules for monitoring applications don’t work well. This is made even more difficult by the fact that cloud services are inherently ephemeral, with containers constantly being spun up and spun down.

How to Monitor SAP Hana with OpenTelemetry

SAP Hana monitoring support is now available in the open source OpenTelemetry collector. You can check out the OpenTelemetry repo here! You can utilize this receiver in conjunction with any OTel collector: including the OpenTelemetry Collector and observIQ’s distribution of the collector. Below are quick instructions for setting up observIQ’s OpenTelemetry distribution, and shipping SAP Hana telemetry to a popular backend: Google Cloud Ops.

Bringing business context to network analytics

Kentik brings real-world business context to the telemetry we collect and the analytics we provide. That’s the overarching theme I got from Networking Field Day: Service Provider 2. As I watched and listened to each presentation, it was pretty obvious to me that Avi, Steve, Doug, and Nina, all technical powerhouses, were a little less focused on packets and a little more focused on how we can improve network operations and a service provider’s ability to make smart business decisions.

The updated Docker integration in Grafana Cloud now supports logs and metrics

More than 17 million developers use Docker to build, ship, and run applications separate from their infrastructure in order to deliver software faster and more efficiently. With the rising popularity of containerized applications, however, it has become increasingly more complex and difficult to observe and monitor applications running across multiple containers.

What is Website Uptime? Why is Website Uptime Monitoring Important?

Website uptime is one of the most crucial metrics to monitor, particularly if your website is essential for generating revenue. If no one can access a website, all the work and effort you put into getting a website up and running can be gone. With website uptime monitoring, you can keep track of when and how long your website is unavailable. Website uptime monitoring is a crucial component of website management.

An Engineer's Bill of Rights and Responsibilities

Power has a way of flowing towards people managers over time, no matter how many times you repeat “management is not a promotion, it’s a career change.” It’s natural, like water flowing downhill. Managers are privy to performance reviews and other personal information that they need to do their jobs, and they tend to be more practiced communicators.

An Introduction to Database Sharding With SQL Server

One of my favorite consulting questions to ask when dealing with a scalability problem is, “If you could change the system design with the knowledge you have today, what would/wouldn’t you change and why?” Sometimes it’s best to ask this question on a one-on-one basis with different developers, DBAs, report writers, and architects to get honest answers that aren’t intimidated by the other people sitting in a meeting or to avoid potential debating and arguing over a solution.