A simple theorem applies for earthquakes and operational issues: in due time both will occur.
In California, governments and individuals invest the majority of efforts on surviving earthquakes; encouraging people to put together #EarthquakeKits to prepare. Sensible, but reactive.
The recent Napa earthquake (latest reports of $1b+ in damages) hastened calls to implement an “early warning system”, at a cost of $80m, that could provide advance earthquake alerts offering precious seconds to find shelter, stop trains and power down utilities… possibly saving lives and billions of dollars in damage. Smart, and proactive investment.
While DevOps teams aren’t routinely facing life-or-death issues, consequences of operational #dataquakes can severely impact revenue, and problems happen quickly. The difference: proactive alerts and a responsive “early warning system” won’t set you back $80m or require government involvement.
When operational disaster strikes your infrastructure, first look at your log files (you are centralizing those in the cloud and removed from your failure points, right?) to discover the truth of what happened and resolve the problem. To get ahead of issues, those same log files – if leveraged wisely – provide you “early warning signal” for problems that are about to occur.
Smart applications like Loggly provide alerts giving you the time to act, saving you from costly failures and downtime. You can’t control nature or all operational issues, but you can understand, predict and alert. If you’re responsible for infrastructure health, build out your Data Earthquake Kit before the next big #dataquake.
–Dave Ewart, VP of Marketing and Growth, Loggly


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