Netflix to Open Source “Monkey” Website Fault Testing Tools

Posted by on Apr 18, 2012 in Blog | 2 comments

Netflix, perhaps more than any other web service must keep going, even when it has ridiculous traffic. To that end, it uses Amazon Web Services to allow for elastic coverage, but it also tests its systems regularly with a set of tools it refers to as monkeys — and according to Wired, it intends to open source the whole kit and kaboodle over the next year. In a post last July on the Netflix blog, it discussed the idea behind the monkey tools. As a cloud-based vendor, Netflix understands that the cloud provides redundancy and fault-tolerance, but it also wants to be able to survive any...

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Instagram Vs.1940s Census Data – Web Site Traffic Spike Showdown

Posted by on Apr 9, 2012 in Blog | 0 comments

Last week we had a unique opportunity to observe two web sites experiencing traffic spikes.  One came through with flying colors planning for the spike and handling it with aplomb. The other one crashed and burned under heavy traffic pressure. The site that crashed? The long-awaited 1940s census data site. The site that planned well: Instagram. Let’s look at this tale of two spikes starting with the positive story first. Last week Instagram, the photo sharing site, launched Instagram for Android. According to an LA Times article, Instagram boasts 30 million iOS users and had an Android...

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2012 Trends: Analytics Comes to IT

Posted by on Dec 20, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments

If you want to see a good list of monitoring trends, check out the 12 Predictions for 2012 on APM Digest. One that stuck out for me was # 3: Breakout Year for Predicitve Analytics because I’ve always thought there was a connection between business analytics and application performance monitoring. In this instance, the analytics don’t involve business or web analytics as you might think of them. Instead, they involve using analytics tools, which have been used for business knowledge in the past, to build a better understanding of your systems and applications and the interdepencies...

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