Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Latest Posts

A Practical Guide to Logstash: Syslog Deep Dive

Syslog is a popular standard for centralizing and formatting log data generated by network devices. It provides a standardized way of generating and collecting log information, such as program errors, notices, warnings, status messages, and so on. Almost all Unix-like operating systems, such as those based on Linux or BSD kernels, use a Syslog daemon that is responsible for collecting log information and storing it.

Force Multiply Your Observability Stack with a Platform Thinking Strategy

Platform thinking is a term that has spread throughout the business and technology ecosystem. But what is platform thinking, and how can a platform strategy force multiply the observability capabilities of your team? Platform thinking is an evolution from the traditional pipeline model. In this model, we have the provider/producer at one end and the consumer at the other, with value traveling in one direction.

Stop Enforcing Security Standards. Start Implementing Policies.

In days gone by, highly regulated industries like pharmaceuticals and finance were the biggest targets for nefarious cyber actors, due to the financial resources at banks and drug companies’ disposal – their respective security standards were indicative of this. Verizon reports in 2020 that, whilst banks and pharma companies account for 25% of major data breaches, big tech, and supply chain are increasingly at risk.

Is CloudWatch Really Cost Efficient?

One of the keys to CloudWatch’s success is its no bang, no buck billing system. The pricing structure has been designed from the outset to ensure that CloudWatch users only pay for what they actually use. In addition, the CloudWatch Free Tier allows first time users to test the waters without shelling out. The downside of this flexibility and adaptability is complexity.

Scale Your Prometheus Metrics Indefinitely with Thanos

Prometheus metrics are an essential part of your observability stack. Observability comes hand in hand with monitoring, and is covered extensively here in this Essential Observability Techniques article. A well-monitored application with flexible logging frameworks can pay enormous dividends over a long period of sustained growth, but Prometheus has a problem when it comes to scale.

5 Common Elasticsearch Mistakes That Lead to Data Breaches

Avon and Family Tree aren’t companies you would normally associate with cybersecurity, but this year, all three were on the wrong side of it when they suffered massive data breaches. At Avon 19 million records were leaked, and Family Tree had 25GB of data compromised. What do they have in common? All of them were using Elasticsearch databases. These are just the latest in a string of high profile breaches that have made Elasticsearch notorious in cybersecurity.

Where is Your Next Release Bottleneck?

A typical modern DevOps pipeline includes eight major stages, and unfortunately, a release bottleneck can appear at any point: These may slow down productivity and limit a company’s ability to progress. This could damage their reputation, especially if a bug fix needs to be immediately deployed into production. This article will cover three key ways using data gathered from your DevOps pipeline can help you find and alleviate bottlenecks in your DevOps pipeline.