monitoring

Optimizing NGINX and PHP-fpm for high traffic sites

May

16

2014

After 7 years of using NGINX with PHP, we learned a couple of things about how to best optimize NGINX and PHP-fpm for high traffic sites. Below is a collection of tips and recommendations: 1. Switch from TCP to UNIX domain sockets UNIX domain sockets offer better performance than TCP sockets over loopback interface (less copying ...

VMware jumps into log analytics with vCenter Log Insight

Jul

13

2013

VMware made a surprise entry into the data center log consolidation and analysis market recently in early June with its new product vCenter Log Insight. The product is a result of VMware’s acquisition of Pattern Insight in August 2012. While the data center log consolidation and analysis space is already crowded with products from such companies as Splunk, ...

Stackdriver opens its cloud monitoring service for business

May

5

2013

SUMMARY:If you run your applications in AWS or Rackspace clouds, you probably want to monitor their performance and get real-time alerts should things go awry. Stackdriver says it has a service for you. Stackdriver, the Boston startup that wants to bring grown-up monitoring to IT running across public clouds, opened up a public beta of ...

Opscode gains momentum with IBM, Microsoft deals

Apr

29

2013

This was posted originally on Gigaom. SUMMARY:IBM is integrating Chef into SmartCloud and MIcrosoft is adding support for Azure as well in a sign that enterprises are fully aboard the devops bandwagon. Opscode’s been on a bit of a roll. The devops fan favorite is the foundation of Amazon Web Services new Opsworks application lifecycle ...

Data centers are getting more sophisticated, so why aren’t our metrics keeping up?

Apr

25

2013

This was posted originally on Gigaom. photo: Microsoft SUMMARY:As the web giants, co-lo providers and cloud companies add millions of square feet of data center space we need to start getting more sophisticated in how we view these rooms full of servers. The word is out. Legislators in Iowa say Facebook is the company behind what ...

Ten Years After: Where Security Monitoring Still Falls Short

Apr

18

2013

It really doesn’t seem like it was that far in the past. Ten years ago, the company I was with was running an information security program for a large healthcare corporation. As the program manager and de facto CISO, my job was to work with my team to protect our client’s data using every means ...

Installing Cacti

Apr

15

2013

Server monitoring is one of the most important aspects of managing a network. Cacti is a free PHP/MySQL script which can monitor everything from process counts to bandwidth, and is fairly easy to setup and use. If you have multiple clients you can even delegate specific access levels so that they can only view the ...