This blog post explains observability, a method to understand how a system works by examining its outputs. Observability is different from monitoring, which just collects data. The three pillars of observability are metrics (numerical indicators), logs (event records), and traces (request flow tracking). Popular observability tools include Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, ELK Stack, Honeycomb, Datadog, New Relic, Sysdig, and Zipkin. By understanding these pillars and using the right tools, you can gain valuable insights into your system's health and troubleshoot problems before they impact users.

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This blog post compares two leading incident response tools: PagerDuty and Splunk On-Call (formerly VictorOps).

Choosing a VictorOps Alternative: PagerDuty is a robust alternative to Splunk On-Call, excelling in alerting, incident management, and automation.

Choosing a Splunk Alternative: If real-time alerting, collaboration, and swift response are your priorities, PagerDuty might be ideal. Splunk On-Call excels in data analysis and proactive problem identification.

Feature Breakdown:

Alerting & Escalation: PagerDuty offers real-time, multi-channel notifications with escalation policies, while Splunk On-Call focuses on data correlation and customization.

Incident Response: PagerDuty provides collaboration tools and centralized consoles, whereas Splunk On-Call centers on log analysis and root cause investigation.

Automation & AI: Both leverage automation and AI, with PagerDuty emphasizing alert grouping and workflows, and Splunk On-Call focusing on anomaly detection and predictive analytics.

Integrations: PagerDuty boasts seamless integrations with various tools, while Splunk On-Call prioritizes data source connections and custom app building.

Pricing: PagerDuty has tiered pricing starting at $25 per user per month, while Splunk On-Call's pricing is complex, ranging from a free tier to expensive enterprise plans.

Beyond the Giants:

The blog also introduces Squadcastas a contender, offering a blend of features from both PagerDuty and Splunk On-Call at an affordable price.

This blog post compares two incident alerting and response platforms: Opsgenie and Pagerduty. It helps readers choose between the two based on their needs and budget.

Here's a quick breakdown:

On-Call Scheduling: Opsgenie is easier to use, Pagerduty is more powerful but complex.

Alerting: Pagerduty offers more sophisticated alerting with AI-powered noise reduction. Opsgenie provides the basics but lacks advanced features without extra cost.

Incident Response: Pagerduty excels with features like automated actions and deep ITSM integrations. Opsgenie offers basic functionalities.

Integrations: Pagerduty offers more integrations (including Atlassian ecosystem) while Opsgenie has a respectable library of essential connections.

Pricing: Opsgenie starts at $11/month/user, Pagerduty starts at $25/month/user (with additional costs for advanced features).

Overall, Opsgenie is ideal for those who prioritize user-friendliness and affordability. Pagerduty is better suited for those who need advanced features, strong integrations, and robust incident response capabilities, but are willing to pay a premium.

This blog post discusses how Squadcast's Microsoft Teams application can improveon-call incident response workflows. It highlights the key features of the integration, including real-time incident notifications, actionable messaging, and clear on-call visibility. The post also details the benefits of using Squadcast, such as improved collaboration, reduced downtime, and enhanced situational awareness. It concludes by explaining the simple three-step integration process and mentions additional features of Squadcast.

In this guide, I dive deep into the ins and outs of Office 365, showing you what it’s best used for and how to configure it, while also providing you with some actual examples. What is an Office 365 SMTP server? SMTP, orSimple Mail Transfer Protocol, is an internet standard protocol responsible for ..

In web development, email validation in JavaScript rules the game. Be it form validation, or a sign-up sequence email validation, you need to be sure users type the right thing. 

Here, I cover JavaScript email validation front-end and back-end (server-side). And this “full-stack” tutorial is geared towards beginners, but there are also nuggets of wisdom for more advanced users. 

As always, there are JavaScript code snippets you can easily copy-paste to your project. 

This blog post provides an overview of observability tools for DevOps engineers and SREs. Observability is essential for understanding system behavior and troubleshooting problems in complex IT infrastructure. The blog explores different categories of observability tools including log aggregation, APM, distributed tracing, time-series databases, and metrics collection. Examples of popular tools in each category are provided along with a brief description of their features. Finally, the blog emphasizes the importance of choosing the right observability tools based on your specific needs and highlights the benefits of implementing a strong observability strategy.

This blog post offers guidance on building and maintaining an SRE team. It emphasizes the importance of SRE in today's world and outlines seven key tips to achieve success. Here's a summary of those tips:

Start small and focus internally: Begin by assigning staff from existing departments to focus on maintaining service reliability.

Recruit the right people: Look for SRE professionals with problem-solving skills, automation expertise, and a commitment to continuous learning. They should also be excellent team players with a broad perspective. Consider using SRE tooling to improve team efficiency.

Define your SLOs: Establish clear and achievable performance indicators for your systems.

Establish a holistic incident management system: Implement a system for tracking on-call duties and streamlining the incident resolution process. SRE tooling can be helpful here.

Accept failure as inevitable: Recognize that failures are part of the development process. Focus on creating a minimum viable product and improving over time.

Conduct incident postmortems to learn from mistakes: Analyze incidents to identify root causes and develop solutions to prevent future occurrences.

Maintain a user-friendly incident management system: Choose an incident management system that is easy to use, fosters communication, and integrates with other relevant tools.

By following these steps and leveraging SRE tooling, you can establish a strong SRE team that keeps your systems reliable and your customers satisfied.

This blog post talks about how to handle incidents effectively in an organization. It emphasizes the importance of having a well-defined plan that outlines steps to take when an incident occurs. The article also details several helpful tools and best practices to follow. Here are the key takeaways:

Why it's important: Minimizes downtime, revenue loss, and brand reputation damage.

Steps to take: Identify/classify incidents, communicate effectively, assign roles, and have standard procedures.

Essential tools: Monitoring/alerting tools, service catalog, log management, runbook automation, collaboration platforms, and incident management platforms.

Best practices: Regularly train staff, conduct simulations, review incidents, and continuously improve the plan.

This blog post explores alternatives to Pagerduty, a popular incident management tool. It emphasizes features to consider when choosing an alternative, including user-friendliness, scheduling, notifications, workflows, integrations, and cost.

The blog compares Pagerduty with ServiceNow, highlighting strengths and weaknesses of each. While Pagerduty is user-friendly with pre-built features, ServiceNow offers more powerful customization.

Finally, the blog introduces Squadcast as a well-rounded alternative that combines the strengths of both Pagerduty and ServiceNow, with a focus on user-friendliness, powerful workflows, and competitive pricing.