We need to talk about production readiness opsdemon Thu, 02/05/2024 - 09:00 On December 31, 2008, all the Microsoft Zunes around the world stopped working. The development team hadn’t properly accounted for the Leap Year, and when the year changed over, everything broke. On February 29, 2024, card payments in a Swedish grocery chain went down, payment terminals in New Zealand gas stations crashed, and an EA Sports racing game was rendered unplayable for the day. https://www.cortex.io/post/we-need-to-talk-about-production-readiness Cortex Blog DevOps Microservices Ganesh Datta Ganesh D ..read more

How Cortex uses catalog customization to increase visibility across projects opsdemon Fri, 26/04/2024 - 09:00 After decades as a software engineer, I’ve seen firsthand how complexity can grow exponentially with scale. Thankfully, over that time, quite a few tools have come along to help manage some of that complexity. One great example is the Internal Developer Portals (IDPs), which were built to connect an engineering organization’s architecture, processes, documentation, and definitions and alignment to standards of health. https://www.cortex.io/post/how-cortex-uses-catalog-customization-to ..read more

The Pocket Guide to Production Readiness (plus bonus framework!) opsdemon Fri, 19/04/2024 - 09:00 Faster software development cycles means greater reward, and greater risk. Organizations that lose sight of continuous alignment to standards risk delayed launches, higher risk of churn, and higher costs—not to mention unproductive and unhappy developers. Building a strong production readiness review process can help, but existing tools and frameworks haven’t made it easy to keep up to date with the increased velocity at which software is expected to ship. In this blog we’ll look at what producti ..read more

What's new in on-call best practice? opsdemon Tue, 16/04/2024 - 09:00 Already a quarter of the way into 2024, we’re seeing a lot of shake-up in on-call best practices. We’re excited to see AI in the mix, but we’re also seeing a renewed focus on existing and neglected best practices. Some current topics in on-call best practices include: In this article, we’ll review some best practices and explore the 2024 trends. https://www.cortex.io/post/whats-new-in-on-call-best-practice Cortex Blog DevOps Microservices On Call Cortex Cortex team@getcortexapp.com False False False ..read more

Software quality metrics developers should track (and how to do it) opsdemon Mon, 08/04/2024 - 09:00 It's been a decade since Marc Andreessen declared that software is eating the world, and it is still hungry. Customers expect software solutions for every need, driving digital transformation in every analogue industry. Software quality is now fundamental to company reputation, directly affecting customer satisfaction, brand and overall business success. https://www.cortex.io/post/software-quality-metrics Cortex Blog DevOps Microservices Cortex Cortex team@getcortexapp.com False False ..read more

Implementing Jaeger for Distributed Tracing in Microservices opsdemon Fri, 05/04/2024 - 09:00 Earlier, applications were mostly monolithic, meaning that several programs were written in the same language and placed in the same web stack. However, it is no longer the case today. Today, every software is comprised of several small application programs coming together each providing a service of its own. These applications are what we call microservices. With the rise of microservices, the need for comprehensive visibility into the flow of requests and responses across multiple services has beco ..read more

Beyond Microservices: Miniservices, Macroservices, and the in between opsdemon Wed, 03/04/2024 - 09:00 Containerized microservices have been the gold standard for cloud computing since they replaced the monolith architecture over a decade ago. The flexibility, scalability, and velocity they enable for teams make them an obvious choice. Yet, a strict interpretation of one service for one function doesn’t quite serve everyone, especially when architectures get large. We’ll discuss how flexibility in service architecture might be the way to go. https://www.cortex.io/post/beyond-microservices C ..read more

Falling Into the Stargate of Hidden Microservices Costs opsdemon Tue, 02/04/2024 - 09:00 Proponents of microservices claim more development velocity and reliability; more comprehensive test and vertical or horizontal scale with a container orchestrator; tons of flexibility around tool choice. They’re not wrong: When you build with a microservices architecture, you’re likely going to see cost improvements early in your software development life cycle (SDLC), driven mostly by the decoupling of services. https://scoutapm.com/blog/falling-into-the-stargate-of-hidden-microservices-cos… Scout ..read more

Why and how to use site reliability golden signals opsdemon Mon, 01/04/2024 - 09:00 Software complexity makes it harder for teams to rapidly identify and resolve issues. IT service management has evolved from an afterthought to a central part of DevOps. Microservices architectures are prone to delay or missed identification of such concerns. Monitoring mechanisms need to keep up with these complex infrastructures. Maintaining reliability and performance while harnessing this complexity requires a considered, data-driven approach. Enter site reliability engineering (SRE), which bridges the gap ..read more

Generative AI and developer experience opsdemon Thu, 28/03/2024 - 09:00 From its initial appearance in the dev-tools space, GenAI has had an outsized impact on how developers approach day-to-day tasks (just ask any developer about when they first started using GitHub’s copilot). While any risks are still being evaluated—like potential for introducing anti-patterns or inadvertently running afoul of compliance requirements, many engineering teams have successfully implemented GenAI with measurable gains in collaboration and productivity. In this blog we’ll examine the orgins of GenAI, examine h ..read more