3 min
IT Ops
Shared Services: The Unicorn Every DevOps is Looking For
In my hunt for the mysterious DevOps practice, I’ve been let down. DevOps are
hard to find. When you find them, they do not exactly do what you think they
should do. Some DevOps teams only execute on automation for dev; while others
are operations folks with a new name; and still others are internal consultants
helping operations and developers (but not actually doing the work).
In my DevOps scavenger hunt I have identified a new type of creature; shared
services (aka the unicorn)
What I have
4 min
IT Ops
4 Alerts You Need In Case System Events Stop Occurring
“Silence is golden”
This is not always true, especially when something you were expecting to happen*
doesn’t* happen.
However, this is true when you have a system or a service you are trying to
maintain and things stop happening or go quiet.
We recently developed a new service — Inactivity Alerting
[https://logentries.com/product/inactivity-alerting/] — to help you with this
common challenge and, as you might expect, it fires alerts when there is noted
inactivity around a specific log or eve
4 min
IT Ops
How to Format Nginx and Django Logs Using KVPs
Interested in learning a couple insider tips to gain more value from your
logs using additional structure?
Specifically, we will show how to easily introduce key-value pair (KVP) format
on Nginx and Django logs.
Of course, the approach is not restricted to those two types of logs, and can be
applied to numerous applications.
Previously, our Head of Product, Marc Concannon explained how logging
information in JSON format [/2014/09/3-common-problems-solved-with-json/]makes
it possible to leverag
3 min
IT Ops
Logs: The Most Fine-grained Data Source
As co-founder of Logentries I am often asked – “Why Logs?” And I have to admit,
upon first impression, ‘log management
[https://logentries.com/doc/log-management/] and analytics’ does not seem like
the sexiest space 🙂 However at Logentries [http://logentries.com]we are here to
redefine that space, to provide a solution to access, manage and understand your
log data that is easy to use, cost effective and intelligent (i.e. it does the
hard work so you don’t have to). But that being said it sti
2 min
IT Ops
How to Master the Installation of the Windows Agent
Over the past month we have been updating the LogentriesWindows Agent
[https://logentries.com/doc/windows-agent/] to make it more powerful for our
growing customers needs. One particular area we felt needed updating was the
Command Line capabilities of the Windows Agent
[https://logentries.com/doc/windows-agent/].
Logentries is now proud to announce that you now have even more ways to install
our Windows Agent to your environment.
[/content/images/le-img/2014/10/Windows-Agent-Mastering-the-In
5 min
IT Ops
In the Log Management World: Are you a Fox or Hedgehog?
I’ve recently been reading Nate Silver’s book, “The Signal and the Noise.” In
the book, Silver looks at a number of areas where predictions have been made and
considers how successful they have been, as well as the reasons why they have
been accurate (or not).
I couldn’t help but draw the similarities how most companies use log management
[https://www.rapid7.com/fundamentals/what-is-log-management/] tools today.
Silver’s particular interests are political forecasting (see
www.fivethirtyeight
3 min
IT Ops
Heroku Buttons Rock!
As one of Heroku’s beta users I had the chance to check out the new Heroku
button gallery [https://buttons.heroku.com/] last week. I must say I was very
pleasantly surprised.
Over the past few years, it’s fair to say Heroku have nailed their PAAS
offering. They are one of the few PAAS providers to truly succeed in providing
developers both an easy to deploy platform, and a full ecosystem of add ons.
This allows you as a developer to get on with what you do best.
Yes, you can actually spend you
3 min
IT Ops
Logging from PHP Web Frameworks like Laravel
So what is Laravel [http://laravel.com/]?
Laravel is a relatively new MVC web framework for PHP that was released in 2012.
It’s also the most popular PHP project on Github
[https://github.com/laravel/laravel] at the time of this post. Like many web
frameworks, Laravel boasts an easy learning-curve to get an app up and
running. This was certainly the case when I used it.
While this post is focusing on logging in Laravel, its applicable to other php
web frameworks, like Symfony2 [http://symfony.c
5 min
IT Ops
Cloud Platforms vs. On-Prem - A Guide for the Rest of Us
Working for Cloud based businesses for the greater part of a decade now, one
question invariably comes up:
“Why should I move my data to the cloud?”
There are always a few objections that come up as well. Following-up on a
previous blog post where we discussed the business benefits of cloud computing
[/2014/09/7-benefits-of-cloud-based-computing-for-non-technical-techies/], this
will be a discussion on the most common objections and how to have a
conversation around cloud and on-premise envir
2 min
IT Ops
E2N Reduces Anxiety and Increases Customer Satisfaction with Log Data
E2NGastro [http://gastro.e2n.de/] is a small startup in Germany, who provide a
SaaS platform for restaurant management, staff management, timekeeping, and work
schedules (among other services). We spoke with their CEO/CTO, Bjorn Raupach,
who shared the history behind their use of log data.
[/content/images/le-img/2014/09/E2N-product.jpg]
Before using a log management tool [https://logentries.com/doc/log-management/]
, E2N had log files, but they were difficult to locate.
To access them, you had
4 min
IT Ops
3 Common Problems Solved With JSON
One of the most common questions we get asked by customers is:
“What’s the best way to log my data?”
My answer is always:
“log using JSON format wherever possible.”
The next question we often get asked – (but not as much)…
Yeah JSON, …Hmmm, what is JSON again?
So JSON is:JavaScriptObjectNotation.
But put simply, this is a way that data can be stored in a structured format,
where each piece of data will usually have an identifier (known as a key) and a
value (which can be in multiple forma
4 min
IT Ops
7 Benefits of Cloud Computing for Non-Technical Techies
Much has been written about the cloud. What it is
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing], where it is
[http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2456/2171], how it works
[http://computer.howstuffworks.com/cloud-computing/cloud-computing.htm], etc.
This isn’t going to be a rehash of those questions.
This is a cloud computing guide for the non-developer or non-operations guy.
The goal of this post is to lay the groundwork for a further discussion: of
cloud vs. on-premise, an
5 min
IT Ops
How to Avoid the Big Data Black Hole
It takes a lot of will power, in our data obsessed world to say “too much!”
However, there are many ways where too much information is destroying
productivity, and actually causing bad decision making, not good. But it is hard
to avoid the world of opportunities that has been opened in data collection and
analysis. So how do you balance the two? The first step is to understand there
is a big difference between data collection, and it’s utilization. While it
seems subtle, the difference is key, a
3 min
IT Ops
Scaling with RESTful Microservice Architecture
As described in a previous post [/2014/06/smart-integration-testing/] on this
blog, we have been using the Dropwizard
[https://dropwizard.github.io/dropwizard/] framework to quickly develop high
quality, easily testable
[/2014/07/smart-continuous-delivery-using-automated-testing/], RESTful
microservices to expand the functionality of our product. These complement the
existing multi-instance services running in our cluster and contribute to the
continued scaling of the Logentries service. Both i
4 min
IT Ops
Monitoring & Analyzing AWS CloudTrail Data From Multiple AWS Regions
We recently released AWS CloudTrail integration with Logentries
[https://logentries.com/doc/aws-cloudtrail/] – and not surprisingly we’ve seen a
significant uptick in adoption as one of our most popular integrations. My job
as director of customer success is to make things as simple for our customers as
possible. One question that consistently pops up, is how to collect AWS
CloudTrail logs from multiple AWS regions.
We follow Amazon’s best practices
[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/awscloudtrail/lat