If I was teaching Server Health 101, I'd start with four key metrics: CPU Usage Memory Usage Network I/O Disk Utilization The approach for fetching these metrics on Linux hosts is tried-and-true (hint: look in the /proc folder). However, I was curious about Docker Containers: where do I access these ... Read more

Application monitoring doesn't have to be complicated. Introducing scout_statsd_rack , a drop-in Ruby gem for monitoring key performance metrics in your Rails app. scout_statsd_rack leverages StatsD for lightweight Rails app monitoring via Rack middleware. Lets see how fast we can go from no monitoring to a Rails performance dashboard plus ... Read more

Last week, I spent Thursday (4/23/15) and Friday (4/24/15) at DevOpsDaysRox . If you've never attended a DevOpsDays events - find your closest one here and signup now. So what makes DevOps Day special? First, you'll find an active community that prides itself on inclusion and making everyone feel welcome. ... Read more

When it comes to agent-based monitoring and Docker , you're typically choosing between two bad options: (1) install the agent and its dependencies directly on the host or (2) running an agent in every container. Installing the agent on the host is bad : Docker is best when everything is ... Read more

Migrating backend search technologies on a high-throughput production site is no easy task, but Vector Media Group was recently faced with this decision. With a popular client site struggling under the load of complex MySQL full-text search queries, they recently switched to Elasticsearch . I spoke with Matt Weinberg to ... Read more

You try creating a file on a server and see this error message: No space left on device ...but you've got plenty of space: df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/xvda1 10321208 3159012 6637908 33% / Who is the invisible monster chewing up all of your space? Why, ... Read more

During a team camp among the lofty peaks of Breckenridge, Colorado, we talked a lot about the future of Scout and monitoring in general. Big mountains and nature have a way of doing that. One thing that was getting our nerd juices flowing: Go . At Monitorima in May, it ... Read more

Your high-powered server is suddenly running dog slow, and you need to remember the troubleshooting steps again. Bookmark this page for a ready reminder the next time you need to diagnose a slow server. Get on "top" of it Linux's top command provides a wealth of troubleshooting information, but you ... Read more

Kevin Lawver , President @ Rails Machine , is our guest author for this post. Few things feel worst than rolling out a High Availability (HA) system, then regularly seeing that system collapse. For our team at Rails Machine, that failing HA system was MySQL Multi-Master Replication Manager (MMM) . ... Read more

I've been hearing how Docker is the new awesome, but it didn't click for me until I dug in with a practical question: if we deployed Scout via Docker, would deployment be a more pleasurable experience? My three takeaways are below. Finally, an efficient way to simulate our production environment ... Read more