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Quick Notes From Monitorama PDX 2014

Written by on May 9, 2014 in Monitoring.

Last update on June 12, 2018.

Earlier this week I was at the Monitorama conference in Portland. This was the third Monitorama but the first that I'd attended, and if you're interested in operations and monitoring issues I can't recommend it highly enough, the signal to noise ratio was very nearly 100%. Biggest takeaway is to never miss this conference again.

This is a quick list of things I noted at the conference, and is basically meant as a reminder to myself to write about the topics in more detail when I get the chance.

Observations:

Gold Nuggets:

  • Metrics 2.0
  • Sensu is the new event engine of choice for monitoring.
  • Separate your eventing from your front-end interface and notifications system - use Flapjack
  • If you’re not writing monitoring and analytics tools in Go, what’s wrong with you?
  • Graphite is where everyone stores metrics, mention OpenTSDB and you get confused looks.
  • Everything you know about anomaly detection is wrong.
  • Metrics streams and audio streams are the same, you can use DSP algorithms on your metrics.
  • Want a NoSQL database to back your monitoring tool? Use Redis.
  • Threat detection can be boiled down to a yes/no question - are you being attacked by the Mossad?
  • There are two keys to maintain stability and prevent security incidents:
    1. Never update anything
    2. Eliminate men
  • You can learn everything you need to know about failed deployments from the Vasa case study  - http://www.slideshare.net/petecheslock/17th-century-shipbuilding-and-your-failed-software-project-34363385
  • Feedback - It's harder than you think