As your startup grows, infrastructure and deployment get more complex, raising a key question: “Do we need a DevOps engineer?” While automation tools can handle many tasks early on, there comes a point when manual intervention becomes necessary to scale efficiently and securely. This guide will help you assess when it’s time to hire your first DevOps engineer, the key responsibilities they bring, and alternatives that can delay the need for a full-time hire.

Data loss can come from any number of sources, whether it’s a hurricane that causes major flooding in a server room or a bad actor threatening the safety of critical data by demanding a ransom for its safe return. If an organization only has a single copy of data on that waterlogged hard drive or in the hands of a cybercriminal, the odds of recovery are slim to none.

As an IT professional or network administrator, you understand the critical importance of maintaining a smooth and efficient network. LAN congestion can be a silent disruptor, causing significant slowdowns and affecting the productivity of your entire team. Imagine trying to navigate through a traffic jam on your way to an important meeting – frustrating, isn't it? This is precisely what LAN congestion feels like for your network.

SD-WAN has revolutionized how organizations optimize network performance and enhance connectivity across geographically dispersed locations. However, to fully capitalize on the benefits of SD-WAN, it is crucial organizations implement robust operational and monitoring practices. This is especially important given the growing operational and security challenges associated with the rising popularity of cloud-based services and SaaS applications.

Measuring progress in software development is hard. Our industry is defined by complexity, entropy, shifting deadlines and priorities, and customer expectations that evolve almost as quickly as the technology that we use every day. The nature of this environment means that we need to apply continuous feedback loops, robust frameworks and structured approaches to do good work.

Cloud migration–often also referred to as digital transformation or cloud modernization–is a critical process organizations undertake to enhance their IT infrastructure. Whether moving from traditional data centers to the public cloud (“lift and shift”) or transitioning from public cloud VMs to PaaS services (“refactoring”), cloud migration presents a set of common challenges that can impact project success.

For years, we’ve been hearing about the dangers of Bisphenol-A (BPA). “Ditch any products with BPA in them,” we’ve repeatedly been told. So, we diligently check the labels of our canned goods, plastic food storage containers, and water bottles. We may even check our cookware, beauty products and other items that touch consumables. But that’s not enough. Though some governments have banned the use of BPA in recent years, not all do.

One of the biggest advantages of the OpenTelemetry project is its vendor neutrality — something that many community members appreciate, especially if they’ve spent huge amounts of time migrating from one commercial vendor to another. Vendor neutrality also happens to be a core element of our big tent philosophy here at Grafana Labs. We realize, however, that this neutrality can have its limits when it comes to real-world use cases.