4 min
IT Ops
Dynamite Plots, Logs, & the Joy In Knowing
I saw this online and chuckled.
I believe it was Mark Twain that said, “Humor is the good natured side of
truth.” Well, in my humble opinion, humor can be used as the genesis for
interesting blog posts. So, you may be wondering, what do Dynamite Plots, logs
and the joy of knowledge have to do with each other?
Well, if you have a few minutes, I’ll try to make the link.
For me, the humor of the cartoon above is rooted in multiple areas, but most of
all in the idea that the data inherently has
3 min
IT Ops
Connected QA: Selenium + Log Analysis
Does the idea of adding Quality Assurance (QA) test runs to your log analysis
platform sound strange? It’s actually not! The value in adding QA test runs goes
beyond helping the QA team; it helps the entire development shop as they move to
a DevOps framework.
[/content/images/le-img/2014/12/Using-Log-Analyis-for-Selenium-QA-Testing.png]
I talk a lot about the integrated development environment and going beyond
ad-hoc tool selection to a more deliberate and holistic approach. This also
means br
4 min
IT Ops
Is Server Monitoring Dead?
Once upon a time one of the first pieces of software you installed on your
infrastructure was a server monitoring tool. This was the control panel through
which you could view how effectively your infrastructure was being used, akin to
the speedometer and temperature gauges on your car, or the dashboard of dials in
an airplane’s cockpit.
Server monitoring tools usually work by capturing resource usage information
from your OS performance API or performance counters (e.g. via proc stats on
linu
6 min
IT Ops
End-to-End IoT Monitoring with Log Data
A recent blog [/2014/11/what-is-the-role-of-logging-in-the-internet-of-things]
explored the importance of logging in general in terms of IoT devices. It also
cited predictions that a huge number (50 billion) of IoT devices are expected to
exist by 2020. While Machine to Machine(M2M) communication is a related area,
the IoT is all about extending the Internet to systems and even low power
devices.
While there is uncertainty about the exact nature of how these devices will be
networked and how th
4 min
IT Ops
Best Practices for Cloud Logging, Security, & Data Protection
When we first founded Logentries in 2010 a lot of people thought Viliam Holub
(co-founder, CTO, and the brain behind processing billions and billions of log
events in real time [https://logentries.com/real-time-log-stream-analytics/])
and I were crazy. The common response was:
“People are not going to send their logs to the cloud… logs might contain very
sensitive data…”
Like typical stubborn founders we persevered in spite of this, and today we
have more than 35,000 users across 100 countries
3 min
IT Ops
Community Packs for AWS: Out of the Box Dashboards, Alerts, & Queries
We recently released Logentries Community Packs
[https://logentries.com/logentries-launches-shareable-community-driven-log-analytics/]
, dynamic JSON files that (when uploaded into Logentries [http://logentries.com]
) automatically create Saved queries, Dashboards and Alerts.
The true power of these packs is that anyone can create, modify and share them.
We called them Community Packs because we want to offer different Communities a
“pack” of log analysis features customized for their specifi
5 min
IT Ops
Keepalived and HAProxy in AWS: An Exploratory Guide
We’re going to explore high availability and load balancing using Keepalived
[http://www.keepalived.org/] and HAProxy [http://www.haproxy.org/].
Keepalived is a routing software designed to provide simple and robust
facilities for load balancing and high-availability to Linux systems and
Linux-based infrastructures.
HAProxy is an open source load balancer/reverse proxy generally used for load
balancing web services, but also has the functionality to load balance TCP
traffic.
Together, Keepali
6 min
IT Ops
ES6: Javascript in Harmony: An Overview of New Language Features
ECMAScript 6 brings powerful new capabilities and some tasty syntactical sugar
to the ubiquitous Javascript language, as it continues to grab an ever
increasing slice of developer mindshare.
Now that the ES6 feature set is frozen and just minor refinements will be
made over the coming months, much of this new functionality has already landed
in modern browsers, and will continue to roll out with each new browser update.
For the impatient, there are also now several excellent precompile / polyf
3 min
IT Ops
How to Implement JSON Formatting of IIS for Analytics and Troubleshooting
Previously, we wrote about setting up a Windows environment
[/2014/11/json-formatting-of-windows-events-its-hot/] to log JSON formatted logs
using our Windows Agent or our DataHub. Now we’ll tackle IIS
[http://www.iis.net].
IIS, like Windows, has a unique log format that makes it difficult to read,
parse, and garner useful information. The log is a flat file that has a
line-per-web hit; similar to Apache or Nginx. But, it’s not as easy to format
intoJSON as Apache and Nginix
[/2014/08/json-lo
4 min
IT Ops
For the Love of Code: Why We Use JSHint for Static Code Analysis
As developers, we all strive for clean, readable, and easy to refactor code;
but, unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen.
No matter how great a developer you are, or what language you’re coding in;
problems caused by bugs inevitably spring up like weeds in the grass. These
problems are exasperated by poorly organized and poorly written code. Once
quality starts to drop, even the cleanest high-quality code in your project
begins to be affected, until you’re left with a jumbled mess of (and ha
3 min
IT Ops
JSON Formatting of Windows Events: It's Hot!
It seems like everyone in DevOps has been talking about JSON recently – JSON is
hot!
Logentries has written a few posts covering this topic, coveringWhat is JSON
[/2014/11/what-is-json-an-introductory-guide/], Common Problems Solved with JSON
[/2014/09/3-common-problems-solved-with-json/], and our Exporting as JSON
[/2014/07/logs-to-metrics-to-json-to-geckoboard/]. However we thought it
would be beneficial to dive into some more specific applications. We already
wrote about a few, namely JSON a
4 min
IT Ops
Unlimited Logging: A New Chapter in Log Management
It’s no secret that log data is quickly becoming one of the most valuable
sources of information within organizations. There are open source, on-premise,
and cloud-based solutions to help you glean value from your logs in
many different ways.
Largely, organizations use logs for debugging during development, for monitoring
and troubleshooting production systems, for security audit trails and forensics,
and (more and more) for different business use cases that transcend product
management and mar
3 min
IT Ops
The Role of Logging in the Internet of Things
Let’s explore the importance of logging from IoT devices…
The IoT is defined as the interconnection of uniquely identifiable embedded
computing devices within an existing internet infrastructure [1]. In plain
English IoT is expected to enable the advanced connectivity of devices and
systems, which would involve machine-to-machine communications (M2M).
The IoT [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things] is still in its early
stages but some analysts predict that the IoT will boost the glob
4 min
IT Ops
What Is JSON? An Introductory Guide
Some days it’s hard to remember if Moore’s law applies to increasing computer
power or the number of technologies and breadth of terminology impacting our
daily work.
JSON, short for JavaScript Object Notation, continues to gain momentum in our
increasingly connected world. Reading this primer will give you a baseline
understanding so you can start having intelligent conversations about the pros
and cons of using JSON
[/2014/10/how-to-format-nginx-and-django-logs-using-kvps/] with your team.
3 min
IT Ops
Logging Activity in a Smart Home
The Smart Home concept is a subset of the Internet of Things(IoT). The core idea
is to connect “things” (digital devices) to each other to facilitate
communication, feedback, and alerting. In essence connecting the physical world
with the digital world. We are installing new sensors and actuators into
everyday devices that is leading to new IoT and Smart Home services by
integrating existing solutions and technologies.
The IoT network is growing at an unbelievable pace.
From just 2 billion obje