Latest SRE & DevOps Articles

It’s Inevitable. Your Database Will Fail

01/23/18 Databases fail. No one can promise 100% uptime, it’s impossible. Whether the database is large, small, on-premise or cloud-based, all have the potential to fail. This coul…

Dungeon Mastering in IT (Part the First)

01/23/18 So, here’s the first confession: I’m an über nerd. I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) since I was about 16 years old. It was also about that time (possibly coincid…

Finding and Predicting Hybrid IT Issues is like Finding a Needle in the Application Stack

01/23/18 Hybrid IT can create issues for IT operations. Here’s an article from my colleague, Mav Turner, that suggests ways to keep things running smoothly. Trying to find the root…

How to automate Ansible reporting + deployment of the Datadog Agent

This article details how to automate Datadog agent installation on AWS EC2 instances using Ansible. It leverages Ansible's dynamic inventory capabilities to automatically discover …

Resilient Internet Access: Important Factors when Provisioning Service

01/19/18 On modern enterprise networks, 100% uptime has become table stakes. Most organizations can no longer rely on a single circuit for internet connectivity. We look to carrier…

Service Desk Basics: The Real Cost Per Ticket

01/18/18 The service desk is the hub that supports all business-related technology that helps businesses generate profits – but in and of itself, the service desk doesn’t turn a pr…

Microsoft Workstation Logs – An Introduction

01/18/18 We’ve all heard the saying, “What you see is what you get.” Life isn’t quite so simple for those focused on security, as what you don’t see is more likely to be what you g…

Slow Queries? Move Fast to Fix Them

01/17/18 What Are the Effects of Slow Queries? Slow queries can have serious negative impacts on your business. The impacts will vary depending on your architecture, industry, or a…

Disaster Recovery – Focus on the Disaster First!

01/16/18 When organizations first take on the challenge of setting up a disaster recovery plan, it’s almost always based on the premise that a complete failure will occur. With tha…

From Financial to Federal: Three Hot Technologies Affecting Government IT

01/16/18 It’s the time of year when we look toward the future. Here’s an interesting article from my colleague, Joe Kim, where he provides a few predictions. Want a good idea of wh…

Reporting vs. Analysis: Do You Know the Difference?

01/11/18 Do you want to create actionable outputs from your data? Then learn the difference between reporting and analysis to gain the power of organizational intelligence. The pos…

How to collect EC2 metrics

This article details how to effectively monitor AWS Graviton3-powered EC2 instances using Datadog. It explains how to leverage Datadog's auto-discovery and custom metrics to gain d…