Shon Harris

"Turning off observability" to reduce metrics (and ultimately, costs) is a problem that's more common than you'd realize, and one that Grafana Labs is focused on solving with Grafana Cloud. This case study is a good example. SailPoint reduced their metrics volume by 33% with the Adaptive Metrics feature which measures your metrics' actual usage and recommends which ones to aggregate. They now have 50 million total active series managed within Grafana Cloud. And the best part is that it's been quite "low-risk" for them. "We haven’t had any complaints about dashboards not working, or a query. Everything runs like it did before. Adaptive Metrics [in Grafana Cloud] has been a great way to show engineering that we can make changes to metrics, and they don’t have to worry about things breaking. And I don’t have to worry about causing outages or downtime. It is a really low-risk solution.” Read the full case study here and reach out if you'd like to learn more about Grafana Cloud's Cost Management capabilities like Adaptive Metrics: https://lnkd.in/gFc4bj5Z

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Number 4 of 100 Blog posts! Version End Excluding in NVD!

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Today I learned that for quite a while I was using the terms "data center" (DC) and "availability zone" (AZ) wrong! My (incorrect!) understanding sincerely was that there may well be more than one AZ in a single DC. Heck, I would buy it that there could be more than one AZ in a single building of a DC, or even on a single floor of this building. Because, in my book, if the reserve power supply for this building/floor is separate from the rest, and so is the building-level/floor-level network switch, this truly is its own, well, _availability_ zone, right? Moreover, I sincerely believed that even within AWS it's perfectly feasible for the DevOps team to want to configure a, say, three-nodes Zookeeper cluster such that each of these three nodes lives in its own "AZ", well within the same data center. Because it just makes sense, doesn't it? If anything, I'd want these three nodes: 1) To be next to each other, for low latency between them, and yet 2) Not in the same "risk group", for their failures to be uncorrelated. By uncorrelated failures I mean that in the case of top-level switch failure, or a local power outage, I would like my setup to be far more likely to lose just one of these three machines, compared to losing two, or all three at once. Well, apparently, intuitive as it sounds, the above explanation is demonstrably wrong, at least in the case of Amazon Web Services. In AWS there are regions, then availability zones, and finally data centers. In this order of traversing the hierarchy top to bottom. Live and learn. Thanks Maxim Zhurovich for educating me.

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It's been particularly gratifying to see such positive reactions to the announcements Grafana Labs made during GrafanaCON last week. For those who couldn't make it or want to relive all the keynote highlights, the recording is now available on our YouTube channel and includes a demo of Explore Metrics and Explore Logs, along with Grafana Alloy, Loki 3.0, and the Grafana App Platform. So many users and customers are excited about Explore Metrics coming out of Grafana 11, and once you watch the demo, you'll see why. https://lnkd.in/gigW_kb9

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Earlier this week, I shared a LINBIT blog post on the subject of Kubernetes. On the same theme, I noticed a YouTube video by The Linux Foundation: ‘Kustomize Your Operator’ by LINBIT’s Moritz Wanzenböck. The presentation is from the recent Open Source Summit. As the video description says, ‘More and more Operators automate deployment of cloud native applications in Kubernetes,’ and if you’re deploying in Kubernetes, watching this video will definitely aid your understanding! https://hubs.ly/Q02WLYXY0

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More k8s this morning. I love working locally with the Minikube project. Makes it easy to test things out without having to incur cloud charges with EKS. Why am I investing so much time right now into k8s if I'm such a fan of #serverless? Simple. Computing is all about solving problems for customers. And k8s solves problems for customers in a slightly different way with a different toolkit. The existence of k8s doesn't invalidate Lambda Functions as a valid compute model. It actually VALIDATES Lambda. As builders, are job is to help our partners on the business side of the equation make the best choices based upon our needs. I'll leave you with this. Knowledge gathering never stops. Be warned before entering the technology space. Moving forward is a mindset

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I recently added container scanning to my CI pipelines with Gitlab CI. Check out this article, it has a number of tips for container security. Perhaps converting more of my services to rootless Podman is next. https://lnkd.in/gkhv4SFX

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There’s more to application security than just shift left tools. Applications built with AI need continuous testing because LLMs change as users interact with them. For these apps especially it’s important that we don’t just monitor security at the beginning of the software development lifecycle. Runtime security tools are able to catch things shift left tools can’t including: - Zero day vulnerabilities - Shadow vulnerabilities - Software dependancies behaving unexpectedly Tomorrow my newsletter subscribers will learn about why runtime is the right time to monitor your application security and a tool that can help.

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Bringing Together Splunk Observability & AppDynamics for Unified Visibility Thursday, September 26, 2024  |  12PM SGT / 2PM AEST End-to-end, unified visibility is key to quickly troubleshooting and ensuring that, when issues do occur, your business and end user’s experience are affected as little as possible. But how do you truly achieve end-to-end visibility? By embracing full-stack observability and the power of the integrated Splunk Platform, Splunk Observability Cloud, AppDynamics, and Splunk IT Service Intelligence (ITSI). Join this session to explore the ins and outs of this integration, how it can help you and your team gain end-to-end visibility and accelerate troubleshooting, and how other customers have achieved real-life success. In this webinar you will learn: - How Splunk Platform, Observability Cloud, ITSI, and AppDynamics are currently being integrated - Why end-to-end visibility is critical and how it helps accelerate troubleshooting - How to implement this integration and what software components are involved - Real-life success stories showcasing the business outcomes and ROI achieved by other customers Use the link below to register: https://lnkd.in/gAZeiHhh

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Many organizations still use rolling restarts to fix problems, but it simply isn’t acceptable anymore. Check out Sumo Logic CEO Joe Kim's latest blog to learn why standards for #observability and #reliability are changing and what you need to stay ahead.

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Vulnerability scanners are a commodity. They search for vulnerabilities out of the same databases and have similar capabilities. The real differentiators are how they highlight the severity and impact of the vulnerabilities. Scanners can identify hundreds of vulnerabilities but security teams can operate a lot more efficiently by patching the vulnerabilities that matter most. Tools like Wiz use a security graph to highlight how a vulnerability impacts certain resources in your infrastructure and how that vulnerability could allow an attacker to move latterly in your environment. Tools like Cycode will highlight the business risk the vulnerability poses. Tools like Oligo can identify which vulnerabilities are actually exploitable. When you’re shopping for tools to help run your vulnerability management program zero in on how those tools can help you focus on fixing what matters.

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I wanted to share what seems to be a great service for AWS discount that was shared on a private Cloud Security Forum slack - https://pump.co/ Pump appears to be an AWS Distributor. While I have not used before, Pump allows SMBs to leverage enterprise discounts and prepayments without the minimum spend commitment. Worth checking out if you're wanting to save a little on your AWS bill - though read the T&C's first!

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In my latest blog post, Brent Eager (from StormForge) and I talk about how they use Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus to manage their Optimize Live solution. https://lnkd.in/gFXUzX9n

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Pwn2Own competitions in China are alerts to any organization, vendor, or open source team. You are on the ‘list.’ That list is quietly curated by the sponsor’s “sponsor.” The teams walk in the door with a playbook - focused on winning. That means multiple teams all digging and _NOT_ sharing their plays. It is rare to have a winning team use their best plays. If you are on this list, it is time to prepare for your future. If you use anything on this list, know that it is explicitly targeted. Thanks to the Grugq for pointing out MatrixCup 2024 list. https://lnkd.in/gFKn37-i

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One of the elusive costs is RDS backup cost, often slipping under the radar. I share my experience in enabling detailed cost tracking using tags and automatically deleting snapshots with Lambda. Big thanks to Gustavo Sanchez for his help in writing this piece. Please let me know your thoughts

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No one wants to deal with #CrashLoopBackOff errors. Take control and keep your pods healthy with these troubleshooting steps and get your pods back up and running in no time. No more CrashLoopBackOff headaches! https://hubs.la/Q02vTQR10 #kubernetes #k8s #devopstools #devops #sre

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For those managing AWS environments, it’s vital to carefully monitor how permissions are configured. Understanding operations like CreateGrant and regularly reviewing your policies can help prevent any unintended access and ensure your security is robust. Being proactive about these details is essential for keeping your setup secure. #cloudsecurity #aws #security #permissions #IAM

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