The elasticity and nearly infinite scalability of the cloud have transformed IT infrastructure. Modern infrastructure is now made up of constantly changing, often short-lived VMs or containers. This has elevated the need for new methods and new tools for monitoring.
In this eBook, we outline an effective framework for monitoring modern infrastructure and applications, however large or dynamic they may be.
<p>Monitoring
Modern
Infrastructure
John Matson
K Young
“Measure what is measurable,
and make measurable what is not so.”
— Galileo
TABLE OF CONTENTS
MONITORING IN THE CLOUD
Monitoring
Modern
Infrastructure
John Matson
K Young
“Measure what is measurable,
and make measurable what is not so.”
— Galileo
John Matson is a technical researcher, author, and editor at
Datadog, where he writes about monitoring and observability.
Before joining Datadog, he was an editor at Scientific American,
where he covered astronomy, planetary science, and physics.
He lives with his family in Nevada City, California.
About the Authors
K Young is Director of Strategic Initiatives at Datadog.
He is a former software architect who was co-founder and
CEO of Mortar Data, which Datadog acquired in 2015.
He lives in Manhattan with his wife and two young children.
Chapter 1:
Constant Change
pg. 1
Chapter 2:
Collecting the Right Data
pg. 6
Chapter 3:
Alerting on What Matters
pg. 14
Chapter 4:
Investigating Performance Issues
pg. 20
Chapter 5:
Visualizing Metrics with Timeseries Graphs
pg. 24
Chapter 6:
Visualizing Metrics with Summary Graphs
pg. 34
Chapter 7:
Putting It All Together: How to Monitor ELB
pg. 43
Chapter 8:
Putting It All Together: Monitoring Docker
pg. 54
Chapter 9:
Datadog Is Dynamic, Cloud-Scale Monitoring
pg. 73
TABLE OF CONTENTS
MONITORING IN THE CLOUD
CHAPTER 1
CONSTANT CHANGE
1
Chapter 1:
Constant Change
In the past several years, the nature of IT infrastructure has changed dramatically.
Countless organizations have migrated away from traditional use of data centers
to take advantage of the agility and scalability afforded by public and private cloud
infrastructure. For new organizations, architecting applications for the cloud is
now the default.
The cloud has effectively knocked down the logistical and economic barriers to
accessing production-ready infrastructure. Any organization or individual can
now harness the same technologies powering some of the