Operational efficiency is as critical within the IT and engineering teams as any other part of the business. Automating repetitive tasks and reducing escalations within and to these teams is of immense value. While automation saves time and boosts productivity, the complexity of developing automation can be a limiting factor and bottleneck. Generative AI is a paradigm shift here, in that it brings consumer-style simplicity to assisting in the development of enterprise-grade automation.

More and more developers are worried about the end-to-end delivery of online apps as the DevOps movement gains attention. This covers the application's launch, functionality, and upkeep. Understanding the function of the server becomes more and more important as an application's user base grows in a live setting. You must collect speed data for the computers hosting your web apps in order to assess the health of your applications.

Kubernetes orchestrates the management of containerized applications, with an emphasis on declarative configuration. A DevOps engineer creates deployment files specifying how to spin up a Kubernetes cluster, which establishes a blueprint for how containers should handle the application workloads.

Are business outcomes, with the potential to make or break an organization’s future, becoming more important than they’ve ever been before? It sure seems that way. Embarking on the journey of business growth despite a treacherous path of challenges, all departments are biting at the bit for stability, solid strategies, and a reliable plan for what’s ahead.

Command Line Interface (CLI) for VMware is not just a feature but a cornerstone for effective virtualization management. Think of it as the hidden trapdoor that takes you straight to the control room of a spaceship. It’s less fancy than the graphical user interface (GUI), but it gets you direct access to the nuts and bolts of your VMware environment.

Kubernetes offers undeniable benefits—scalability, portability, reliability—and enterprises everywhere are jumping on the bandwagon to adopt it. However, as incredible as Kubernetes is, its adopters are learning a difficult lesson: Without taking the steps to standardize Kubernetes adoption across the organization, costs and risk can skyrocket.

The U.S. Department of Defense’s Software Modernization Strategy calls for gaining a competitive advantage to achieve strategic and tactical superiority. Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and implementing zero trust security are critical parts of the movement to modernize the U.S. military. To this end, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen H. Hicks issued a memorandum in February 2022 establishing the formation of the DoD Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer (CDAO).

We're excited to introduce a new enhancement to help teams build more reliable software: Detected Risks. Available today, Detected Risks helps you find and fix the most common causes of infrastructure outages and incidents in minutes—without running Chaos Engineering experiments or reliability tests.

Microservices architecture has become increasingly popular in modern software development due to its scalability, resilience, and flexibility. However, with the benefits of microservices come the challenges of debugging and monitoring these distributed systems. Using the Istio service mesh, OpenTelemetry distributed tracing, and Apica’s Kubernetes-native observability platform, developers can easily collect and visualize performance data in real-time to identify and fix issues quickly.

The consequences of downtime and data breaches can be devastating to organizations, leading to substantial financial losses and irreparable damage to a business’s reputation. If last week's outage by the Bank of England is anything to go by, after losing trillions of £’s per day due to downtime, resilience shouldn’t just be an afterthought for organizations.

Gartner recently published its Hype Cycle for Site Reliability Engineering, 2023, (July 2023) report. OnPage was inspired by this report to share its prediction about the future of site reliability engineering. In this blog, OnPage will review evolutionary tools that can improve site reliability engineering practices.

Discover the pivotal role of artifact management platforms in software delivery. Learn how Cloudsmith streamlines storage, boosts security, scales effortlessly, and more. Elevate your software delivery with indispensable tools and insights. The tools and strategies you employ in software delivery can make all the difference when distributing and managing software. As the intricacies of software projects amplify, the call for streamlined, secure, and adaptable solutions becomes undeniable.

After a span of 5 long years, we've bid farewell to Cycle's old portal. Our engineering team has been working tirelessly over the last 10 months to bring a fresh, new interface to the platform for our users. This new design encapsulates the wealth of insights we've gained during this period. Just last week, we took the decisive step of launching it into production, and the initial feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

When looking at any automation task in System Center Orchestrator, it will inevitably need to connect to other enterprise management systems to automate the process. This means using an Integration Pack or writing your own piece of PowerShell script to build an integration yourself.

Reliability impacts every organization, whether you plan for it or not. Leading companies take matters into their own hands and get ahead of incidents by building reliability programs. But since many of these programs are still nascent, how do you know what good looks like? Of course, the right tools and technology that can enable your team to uncover reliability risks before they impact users play an important role. But improving reliability goes beyond technology.

When it comes to managing your database, monitoring is crucial for maintaining data integrity, optimizing performance, and ensuring efficient resource allocation. In today's fast-paced technological landscape, having real-time insights into your database's health is more important than ever. This is where Heroku Postgres and Hosted Graphite come into the picture.

Printers play a crucial role in various industries, helping businesses efficiently manage their document workflows. However, ensuring optimal printer performance and minimizing downtime can be a challenge. This is where hosted graphite comes into the picture. Hosted graphite is a powerful monitoring tool that allows businesses to graph metrics and gain valuable insights into their printer systems.

In the realm of IT infrastructure monitoring, Nagios has long been a popular choice due to its robust feature set and flexibility. However, even reliable systems can encounter issues, and one recurring problem that Nagios users might encounter is the "Return code of x is out of bounds" error. In this blog post, we'll dive into the details of this error, what causes it, and how it can impact your monitoring efforts.

We have recently added a more detailed anomaly rate chart to Netdata that breaks out the overall node anomaly rate by type, this lets you more easily see what parts of your infrastructure might be experiencing an uptick in anomalies when you see the overall node anomaly rate increase.

Containers and microservices have revolutionized the way applications are deployed on the cloud. Since its launch in 2014, Kubernetes has become a de-facto standard as a container orchestration tool. With traditional approaches of deploying applications in production, developers often release updates or new features all at once, which can lead to issues if there are bugs or other issues that weren’t caught during testing.

The colocation data center is a type of service where organizations can rent out space in a data center facility to house their IT infrastructure. These facilities provide the power, cooling, and network connectivity that companies require to operate their servers, storage devices, and applications. Colocation services allow companies to reduce costs and avoid the hassle of building and maintaining their data center facilities.

We’ve all experienced latency in some form. It’s unfortunately something we’re all too familiar with. We’ve even gone so far as to accept it as a regular albeit undesirable part of the user experience. Yet despite various steps taken over the years, it still exists and is as disruptive as ever.

The more people realize the many ways automation makes their jobs easier, the more they want to apply it – and not just in IT, but across business departments and for multiple processes. By 2025, Gartner predicts: IT individuals have been taking advantage of automation for at least 10 years, but as the stats show, organizations as a whole are gravitating toward the value automation can bring.

The Azure Files update in 2023 introduced Azure Active Directory support for REST API, enabling SMB file share access with OAuth authentication. This advancement improved the scalability of Azure Virtual Desktop by increasing the root directory handle limit from 2,000 to 10,000. Additionally, the public preview of geo-redundant storage for large file shares enhanced capacity and performance, while the Premium Tier now guarantees a 99.99% uptime SLA for all premium shares.

Levitate - Last9's managed TSDB is available on AWS Marketplace.

Monitoring and optimizing IT infrastructure, applications, and networks is crucial for businesses in today's digital landscape. It allows them to proactively identify issues, ensure optimal performance, and deliver a seamless user experience. However, traditional monitoring methods often fall short when it comes to handling the increasing complexity and scale of modern systems. That's where hosted graphite and machine learning come into play.

Imagine this: You’re a doctor. Your patient is a colossal network of computers, servers and cables, all intertwined and humming with activity. Your job? To keep an eye on this complex entity’s vital signs, ensure it runs smoothly and intervene when things start to look a little off. Welcome to the world of network monitoring and the role of network administrators.

Operating Kubernetes reliably and efficiently involves adhering to a set of best practices. These practices help ensure the stability, scalability and maintainability of your Kubernetes clusters and their applications. It's crucial for platform teams (responsible for the infrastructure) and software development teams (responsible for deploying applications) to work together in applying these practices.

AzCopy is a command-line utility designed for copying data to and from Microsoft Azure Blob and File storage. It is a very powerful tool provided by Microsoft that helps users to copy and transfer data efficiently and securely. One of the key features of AzCopy is the ability to schedule transfers. Scheduled transfers can be extremely useful in managing data and ensuring that data is moved or backed up at the most appropriate times.

Cloud deployments and containerization let you provision infrastructure as needed, meaning your applications can grow in scope and complexity. The results can be impressive, but the ability to expand quickly and easily makes it harder to keep track of your system as it develops. In this type of Kubernetes deployment, it’s essential to track your containers to understand what they’re doing.

At first glance, this may appear counterintuitive. After all, aren’t public clouds lauded for their scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency? However, a closer examination reveals a more nuanced reality. This article delves into the driving forces behind cloud repatriation, helping you determine whether it might be the right fit for your organization.

As Kubernetes continues its ascent as a leading container orchestration platform, it's common for users to encounter a perplexing choice between two prominent workload controllers: StatefulSets and Deployments. Despite both controllers being instrumental in managing high-availability workloads, they diverge significantly in terms of features and use cases. Grasping these distinctions is pivotal for fine-tuning the performance and scalability of your Kubernetes infrastructure.

Welcome to the world of Kubernetes - a powerful container orchestration platform. Before we dive deep into the concepts of Kubernetes, let's grasp the concept of containers - a lightweight, and isolated units that package applications along with their dependencies, ensuring seamless deployment and portability. In this blog, you will witness Kubernetes incredible abilities. It can handle the ups and downs of your applications, ensuring they scale seamlessly, even when facing tough challenges.

Kubernetes serves as a robust tool for managing and orchestrating applications across multiple computers. These computers are referred to as 'nodes.' Picture nodes as fundamental units in the ecosystem of your applications. Every node possesses its own computing resources, encompassing memory, processing capabilities, and storage capacity. Your apps are hosted and run by nodes. They give your apps the room and resources they need to work.

Feature flags (also known as feature toggles or switches) are conditional statements in code that determine whether a feature or functionality is visible and accessible to users of an application or service. They offer programmers a powerful tool for managing feature releases. Their capabilities are indispensable in software development, where agility and continuous, automated delivery are paramount.

Every organization requires data analysis and monitoring solutions to gain insights into their data. Grafana and Kibana are two of the most popular open-source dashboards for data analysis, visualization, and alerting.

Define PromQL Macros to standardize complex PromQL queries in Levitate.

At Cribl, we take pride in doing things differently. Our Customers First mentality is at the heart of everything we do as an organization–from free education and sandboxes, community programs, and platforms, to streamlining legal reviews on contracts. We strive to solve problems from first principles – understanding root causes to build optimal experiences vs. piecemeal solutions together. We aim to be a partner—working with you to address your challenges holistically.

In the ever-evolving world of software development, incidents are bound to happen. Whether it's an unexpected server crash, a critical bug impacting user experience, or a security breach, handling incidents swiftly and effectively is crucial for maintaining a seamless user experience and preserving business reputation. That's where incident response tools come in — to help you automate, document, communicate, and mitigate.

Imagine the following situation: You are on call, and your monitoring dashboard has flickering red lights due to an increased number of 5xx HTTP responses from one or more of your Kubernetes services. Now it is time to start to troubleshoot 500 Errors. Instead of panicking, you can use this blog as a guide.

In today’s rapidly transforming digital landscape, virtualization and cloud computing have become pivotal technologies. Among the leaders in these fields, VMware and Microsoft Azure stand as two monumental names, each carving out unique niches and empowering businesses to reach new heights. The integration between VMware’s virtualization solutions and Azure’s vast cloud services is not merely a technical novelty but a strategic alignment that reshapes the way enterprises operate.

The practice of cybersecurity is undergoing radical transformation in the face of new threats introduced by new technologies. As a McKinsey & Company survey notes, “an expanding attack surface is driving innovation in cybersecurity.” Kubernetes and the cloud are infrastructure technologies with many moving parts that have introduced new attack surfaces and created a host of new security challenges.

Collaboration: the secret sauce of every software project. But let’s be honest, mastering the communication needed for seamless teamwork is like trying to herd cats wearing roller skates – sounds amusing, but feels impossible. From navigating multiple time zones and illegible pull requests to juggling so many tasks simultaneously that your brain feels like a browser with fifty tabs open – teamwork isn’t always a walk in the park.

The curtain rose and fell on another spectacular Black Hat USA, the conference set against the backdrop of fabulous Las Vegas in the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. We knew upon hitting the Strip that all the glamor and neon lights were just the preshow for the main event: innovation and the latest in cybersecurity. We couldn’t wait to show attendees and fellow vendors what we had to offer.

In my last blog post, I wrote about the explicit costs of incidents — the ones you can easily track based on dollars lost. But the cost of incidents goes beyond the time spent resolving them. While we’re spending our time managing incidents (that includes mitigating and retrospectives), we’re incurring a large opportunity cost in terms of releasing the next big thing.

User expectations — those of employees and customers alike — are turning up the heat for businesses and their IT departments. Could the demand for nonstop, fast, and basically flawless digital services be any higher?

Kubernetes has revolutionized how modern applications are deployed, managed, and scaled. As the container orchestration platform of choice, Kubernetes provides a dynamic and highly efficient environment for running containerized applications. At the heart of this ecosystem lies the intricate relationship between Kubernetes and the applications residing within its clusters. Applications within Kubernetes clusters are arranged through Pods, which are managed and scaled by various controllers.

In the ever-evolving landscape of modern software development and deployment, Kubernetes has emerged as a prominent solution to manage and orchestrate applications. This technology has redefined how applications are deployed and maintained, offering a flexible and efficient framework that abstracts the underlying infrastructure complexities. In Kubernetes, you define how network traffic should be routed to different services and pods.

Grafana is a monitoring system that helps you visualize your infrastructure and provides notifications when errors occur. It offers interesting features on some versions as it's the case on v7 and v8. We will go through some that are very interesting in particular Panel editor, Tracing UI, bar graph, and visualization. With MetricFire specializing in hosted monitoring, you can easily make a Grafana dashboard by booking a demo or signing on to the free trial immediately.

A detailed comparison of Levitate and Google Managed Prometheus - Cost, Scale and Ease of Use.

Azure Files is Microsoft’s robust file storage solution, offering the ability to access data seamlessly from various locations using standard protocols. But in the world of IT, where data is the heartbeat of operations, its safety is paramount. That’s where Azure Files Backup comes into play. In a digital era, where data loss can spell catastrophe, backing up your valuable files is more than a best practice; it’s a necessity.

Observability is being built by engineers for engineers. In reality, o11y is for all.

We knew Chaos Engineering was in high demand when we first launched the Gremlin certifications in 2021. But we had no idea our Chaos Engineering certification programs would be such a success. There’s a reason: the market is looking for professionals who know how to wield Chaos Engineering well, and Gremlin's certification has become the gold-standard to learn the principles of Chaos Engineering and demonstrate proficiency.

Choosing between a monorepo and a multi-repo architecture can significantly impact how development teams work together. In this article, we’ll delve into the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches, helping you make an informed decision to enhance collaboration within your dev teams.

In today’s data-driven world, managing information is more crucial than ever. With the constant flow of data, both individuals and organizations are increasingly concerned about privacy and security. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has emerged as a key legislative framework in the European Union to protect citizens’ personal data. But how does this relate to the tools we use to manage and transfer data, like Microsoft’s AzCopy?

Applications are the center of your organization’s business. Success (or failure) depends on how quickly you can respond to dynamic market demands driven by cultural shifts, technical innovation, and global events. This business agility is driven by fast, predictable application delivery. The past few years have seen IT leaders in the public sector and private industry alike rushing to get better and faster at delivering applications and services to their customers, employees, and constituents.

Let’s be honest. When you see an alert pop up on your phone, you aren’t thinking “according to section 12 of our most recent SRE handbook used at training 6 months ago I need to keep in mind who should be Incident Commander and who should be Ops Lead”. You’re an engineer at heart.

In today’s digital age, organizations across industries are increasingly reliant on technology for their operations, communication, and data management. While this technological advancement is no doubt beneficial, it also brings with it a heightened risk of cyber threats and attacks. From data breaches and ransomware attacks to intellectual property theft and financial fraud, the consequences of a cybersecurity breach can be devastating for any organization.

HAProxy offers a powerful logging system that allows users to capture information about HTTP transactions. As part of that, logging headers provides insight into what's happening behind the scenes, such as when a web application firewall (WAF) blocks a request because of a problematic header. It can also be helpful when an application has trouble parsing a header, allowing you to review the logged headers to ensure that they conform to a specific format.

Organizations lean on IT as the foundational force for helping the business succeed, even more so when stakes are high, and the future is unpredictable. Considering the countless tasks and processes carried out in IT, automation is no longer a nice to have. It’s a requirement for starting, and maintaining, a system of consistency that supports the business through instability and uncertainty.

In today's world of container-based applications, the role of storage has become more critical than ever. One of the most significant challenges of containerization is the management of stateful applications. Kubernetes, one of the popular container orchestration platforms, provides a solution to this problem - Persistent Volumes (PVs). PVs allow the storage provision to be decoupled from the lifecycle of the Pod, making it easier to manage stateful applications.

Microservices architecture is a software development approach where an application is built as a collection of small, loosely coupled, independently deployable services. Each service focuses on a specific business capability and operates as an autonomous unit, communicating with other services through well-defined APIs. This architectural style is often used in the context of DevOps to create more efficient, scalable, and manageable systems.

As we enter the new era of 4.0, we are thrilled to introduce a range of fresh and user-friendly features. Take a peek into your brand new User Inbox, a centralized hub for all your notifications. Explore the enhanced Connectivity add-on with Circuit Management, allowing you to conveniently bundle your connections. And for those managing multiple outlets, get ready to experience the upgraded Outlet Control functionality that will surely delight you.

In today’s digital world, where data is considered the new oil, organizations are consistently looking for efficient ways to store and manage their invaluable information assets. Microsoft’s Azure Files and Windows Server are two technologies at the forefront of this technological evolution.

Explore Cloudsmith’s powerful OKTA integration for user and user group management. Dive into the benefits, security considerations, and best practices to optimize user access, streamline workflows, and bolster security in your software operations. User management is the backbone of secure and efficient software operations. As businesses grow and evolve, the tools they use must keep pace. Enter OKTA and Cloudsmith.

The Accelerate State of Devops Report highlights four key metrics (known as the DORA metrics, for DevOps Research & Assessment) that distinguish high-performing software organizations: deployment frequency, lead time for changes, time-to-restore, and change fail rate. Observability can kickstart a virtuous cycle that improves all the DORA metrics.

SolarWinds is a trusted name in the world of IT management. This comprehensive suite of tools is designed to help organizations manage, monitor and troubleshoot their IT infrastructure. Solarwinds encompasses several capabilities, including network performance monitoring, systems management, IT security, database management, and IT helpdesk. Still, many SolarWinds replacements exist for IT teams looking for an alternative.

Scaling the deployment, in order to meet demand or extend capabilities, is a known challenge in many fields, but it’s particularly pertinent when scaling microservices. This article looks at the challenges of scaling microservices and examines best practices to overcome them while maintaining app quality, dev efficiency, and a good developer experience.

With Platform.sh, every Git branch maps to a preview environment which is an exact and isolated copy of your live application—including all data, services, and files. They are usually created to build new features, apply security patches, or upgrade dependencies in full isolation and before deploying to production. Although there is a catch—preview environments are often left idle waiting for someone to review and approve any changes made.

Google Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) is a Google Cloud service that provides authentication for web applications. This service simplifies the process of building web applications authenticated with Google, eliminating the need to handle user-related concerns within your application code. This is especially valuable for internal applications within organizations that already utilize GSuite. It is straightforward to use, particularly when operating on Google Cloud.