Ben Forrester

Author Archives: Ben Forrester

While you sleep, Automate resolving Dynatrace problem alerts and report them to ServiceNow!

Integrating observability tools with automation is paramount in the realm of modern IT operations, as it fosters a symbiotic relationship between visibility and efficiency. Observability tools provide deep insights into the performance, health, and behavior of complex systems, enabling organizations to proactively identify and rectify issues before they escalate. 

When seamlessly integrated with automation frameworks, these tools empower businesses to not only monitor but also respond to dynamic changes in real time. This synergy between observability and automation enables IT teams to swiftly adapt to evolving conditions, minimize downtime, and optimize resource utilization. By automating responses based on observability data, organizations can enhance their agility, reduce manual intervention, and maintain a robust and resilient infrastructure. In essence, using observability with automation is indispensable for achieving a proactive, responsive, and streamlined operational environment in the fast-paced and complex landscape of today’s technology.

In this blog post, we will look at a common use case involving the monitoring of processes on both bare metal and virtual machines. Our exploration will focus on utilizing Dynatrace's OneAgent, a deployed binary file on hosts that encompasses a suite of specialized services meticulously configured for environment monitoring. These services actively gather telemetry metrics, capturing insights into Continue reading

Agentless configuration drift detection and remediation

Over time, application owners find themselves compelled to continuously refine their applications and the underlying infrastructure to enhance the products they deliver, whether to internal or external customers. These modifications inevitably lead to changes in the configuration of both applications and infrastructure. While some of these changes may be benign, others can unintentionally steer the systems away from their securely configured state, a phenomenon commonly referred to as "configuration drift." Left unaddressed, the extent of this drift can introduce substantial risks to the organization.

Traditionally, agent-based automation configuration management tools have been favored as the primary solution for tackling configuration drift. 

However, is this approach genuinely the most effective strategy? 

According to AWS's well-architected framework, the concept of a Fault Isolation Zone (FIZ) is crucial, characterized by isolation boundaries like Availability Zones (AZ), Regions, control planes, and data planes. While this concept is centered in a cloud context, the principles behind FIZ remain relevant in traditional data centers and at the network edge. The core idea is to minimize the impact of errors, particularly human misconfigurations, that can propagate beyond a defined Fault Isolation Zone.

Are misconfigurations resulting from human error still a matter of concern?

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