Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

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

Root Cause Analysis in Software Testing: Methods, Techniques, and How AI Is Changing the Game

If you've ever fixed a bug only to watch it come back two weeks later, you already understand why root cause analysis matters. Patching symptoms feels productive - it's not. Getting to the actual cause is what prevents the same issue from eating your team's time over and over again. This guide covers everything you need to know about root cause analysis (RCA) in software testing: what it is, how to do it, which tools help, and where AI is taking it next.

The architecture advantage: Why the data layer decides the AI race

Dozens of startups are sprinting to build the next “agentic SIEM” that can autonomously detect, investigate, and respond to threats. They’re well-funded, well-marketed, but structurally hollow. Here’s what it usually looks like: an LLM layer on top of a thin orchestration engine on top of fragmented or customer-hosted data lakes. While it looks impressive in a demo, it quickly falls apart in production. Why? It’s not built on a strong foundation.

Release software with confidence using Datadog Feature Flags

In this technical product demo, see how Datadog Feature Flags helps teams release software with confidence by connecting every feature flag to real-time observability data. Configure progressive, multi-step rollouts with automated guardrails tied to APM, RUM, and Product Analytics so you can pause or roll back instantly if latency, errors, or key business metrics degrade.

Bring Clarity and Confidence Back to Ops: How Trustworthy Guidance Sets a New Standard

For years, enterprises have chased the promise of artificial intelligence as a remedy for growing operational complexity. It seemed logical that if environments were expanding faster than teams could keep up, smarter models could fill the gap. But early deployments of generic AI proved a difficult truth. Intelligence alone does not create operational clarity. It does not guarantee safety.

When Your Plant Talks Back: Conversational AI with InfluxDB 3

No one wants to stare at a plant and guess if it needs water. It’s much easier if the plant can say, “I’m thirsty.” A few years ago, we built Plant Buddy using InfluxDB Cloud 2.0. The linked article is still a great guide for cloud-first IoT prototyping as it shows how quickly you can connect devices, store time series data, and build dashboards in the cloud with the previous version of InfluxDB. But this time, the goal was different.

Expanding Uptime Monitoring Down The Stack: ICMP Monitors Are Now Available In Checkly

When we started building Checkly's uptime monitoring suite, the goal was to give engineering teams complete visibility across every layer of their stack, from application down to network, in one place. URL, TCP, DNS, and Heartbeat monitors covered a lot of that ground. But one fundamental piece was missing: the ability to simply ping a host and know if it's reachable.

Olly for SREs: 3 ways I actually use it in production

There’s a moment after an alert where you’re not fixing anything yet. You’re trying to answer a much simpler question: Is it actually down? Sometimes it’s obvious. Sometimes it’s 20 alerts at once with no clear starting point. Sometimes it’s a small upstream degradation that might cascade. Sometimes it’s just a spike that resolves on its own. That first phase is orientation. Is the signal real or transient? Is it isolated or spreading? Root cause or symptom?

Unlocking the Power of SolarWinds Through Training - SolarWinds TechPod 107

In this SolarWinds TechPod episode, hosts Chrystal Taylor and Sean Sebring talk with Cheryl Nomanson, a SolarWinds Academy trainer with 14 years at the company. They discuss the importance of technical education for complex software and networks, exploring SolarWinds' comprehensive training offerings including the SolarWinds Academy with its on-demand courses, instructor-led virtual classes, and office hours format. Cheryl explains the SolarWinds Certified Professional (SCP) certification program and the newer SolarWinds Certified Instructor (SCI) program for training partners globally.

The best observability platforms for developers

At some point, logs stop being enough. As applications grow more distributed, understanding what's actually happening in production becomes harder. That's what observability platforms are built for. The hard part is figuring out which one is actually right for your application — and your budget. This guide covers some popular options: what they do well, where they fall short, and who they're for.