Modern software systems have become complex beasts with distributed services, APIs, containers and clouds. This renders traditional monitoring approaches inadequate to deliver sufficient visibility and reliability confidence. Outages easily creep in causing significant revenue and reputation damage.
Monitoring as Code (MaC) paradigms emerge as a fool-proof panacea to these challenges making monitoring nimbler, transparent and collaborative. By codifying the entire monitoring pipeline like infrastructure as code, MaC conquers the pitfalls of old-school tracking.
In this comprehensive guide, we will unpack:
- What makes Monitoring as Code a superior paradigm
- Tangible benefits MaC offers over legacy monitoring
- Step-by-step guide to implementing Monitoring as Code
- Common monitoring pain points and how MaC alleviates them
- Real-world MaC success stories across industries
- Key takeaways and next steps to embark on your MaC journey
So if you are dealing with monitoring fatigue spread across disjointed tools, this guide is for you! Let‘s get started.
What Exactly is Monitoring as Code?
Monitoring as Code (MaC) applies the same Everything-as-Code mindset as Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to managing observability pipelines. Like with IaC, your entire monitoring setup is codified and versioned instead of relying upon flaky manual configs using UIs.
This test-driven approach intertwines monitoring deeper across CI/CD and infrastructure provisioning enabling tighter feedback loops. Mistakes surface faster and fixes ship quicker without reliability gaps.
Here‘s a deeper look at how Monitoring as Code paradigm shift occurs:
Traditional Monitoring
- Manual configs across disparate tools
- Performed sporadically. Not continuous
- Visibility limited to ops and app teams
Monitoring as Code
- Declarative monitor specs in code
- Embedded checks during CI/CD and IaC
- Holistic data shared across orgs
Key Capabilities Unlocked:
- Auto-Discovery: MaC auto-generates monitors for new components
- Peer-Reviews: Monitor code quality assured like app code
- Version Control: Every monitoring change tracked for auditing
- Robust Testing: Validation tests prevent configuration drift
- Compliance Reports: On-demand reports for auditors
- Team Alignment: Unified observability workflow across functions
Monitoring as Code is gaining rapid adoption with the DevOps segment expected to grow over 20% CAGR through 2027. Open source and commercial solutions like Prometheus, Datadog and Checkly enable realizing MaC‘s benefits easier.
Why Enterprises Love Monitoring as Code
Monitoring as Code paradigm offers manifold tangible benefits making it a hit with leading enterprises:
1. Accelerated Software Delivery
Engineering teams waste hours configuring and updating monitors manually reacting to changes. MaC eliminates these mundane repetitive tasks via autonomous auto-discovery and provisioning of monitors.
For instance, new endpoints are automatically tracked for anomalies without any human intervention when code changes. This frees up precious engineering bandwidth to focus on building business value faster.
A Verizon study found only 35% of time is spent coding while 41% gets wasted coordinating monitoring tasks. MaC reverses this equation!
2. Lower Mean Time to Detection and Recovery
The 2021 State of Observability Report found that over 56% of organizations take >6 hours to detect outages. This results in mountains of lost revenue and frustrated customers.
MaC paradigms lower this by tightly integrating monitor configuration, alerting and on-call response processes. Issues surface faster and are routed appropriately to mitigate quicker.
This directly translates to better application uptime and customer experiences.
3. Improved Team Alignment
Disjointed tools and lack of access to monitoring data hamper alignment. MaC consolidates workflows allowing unified troubleshooting data access across dev, ops, infosec and support teams.
On-call rotations become easier to staff. Alert noise also reduces since everyone has context to pinpoint root causes accurately. This results in up to 63% faster investigation and remediation as per OpsGenie.
4. Enhanced Risk Management
Today‘s dynamic applications render risk management difficult. MaC allows continuous validation of controls and compliance reports on demand. Auditors get up-to-date visibility instead of point-in-time snapshot of controls.
Issues like invalid certificates, unauthorized access or data exfiltration can be caught early. This minimizes risk and coupled with auditability helps achieve compliance easily saving millions in audit fees.
Gartner predicts 60% of digital businesses will suffer major service failures by 2023 due to obsolete observability systems. Modernizing monitoring with MaC is key to resiliency.
Clearly, these multiplier benefits make a rock-solid case for adopting monitoring as code. Now, let‘s get into the details of implementing MaC successfully.
Step-by-Step Guide to Implement Monitoring as Code
Implementing Monitoring as Code involves reshaping processes across people, tools, and culture. Here is a phased playbook to roll-out MaC successfully:
Step 1: Integrate Existing Systems
Start by taking stock of existing monitoring systems like APM tools, log aggregators, CI/CD pipelines etc. and integrate where possible. These form the foundation for building your centralized MaC workflow.
Choose an MaC framework like Checkly to unify observability data flows across the disparate tools using flexible APIs.
Step 2: Standardize Interfaces for Interoperability
Document the interfaces exposed by various monitoring systems thoroughly – data formats, protocols, endpoints etc. This allows smoothly funneling monitoring data from underlying tools into the unified MaC layer above.
Clearly specify responsibilities like metrics exposed, alert formats emitted etc. to minimize duplicate signals. Foster discuss and feedback cycles between instrumented service teams, operators and monitoring architects.
Step 3: Kickstart with Monitoring Accelerators
Don‘t reinvent the wheel. Package commonly repeated monitoring use cases like health checks as templatized accelerators that teams can instantly reuse configuring just the specifics.
Good examples include checking for performance metrics like application response time, error rates, infrastructure utilization etc.
Start with higher level accelerators, progressivelydelegating granular monitoring to autonomous teams while maintaining shared visibility of alerts and metrics.
Step 4: Nurture a Collaborative Culture
Incentivize collaborative behaviors through the entire monitoring lifecycle. Embed peer-reviews for monitoring code check-ins to share feedback across perspectives like security, reliability, capacity planning etc.
Empower on-call staff to fine-tune monitors that generate excessive alerts or lack context. Similarly, leverage major incidents as learning opportunities.
This closes the loop ensuring monitoring evolves continuously aligned to engineering priorities rather than a static broken procedure.
Adopting these four steps thoughtfully while accounting for your organization‘s culture and constraints will ensure your Monitoring as Code transformation sticks. Let‘s look next at the various monitoring challenges you will conquer in the process.
Solving Key Monitoring Pain Points using MaC
MaC adoption alleviates several perennial monitoring challenges like inconsistent configurations, alert fatigue and lack of trust that drain productivity:
1. Eliminating Manual Monitoring Configuration
Traditional monitoring requires manual creation and upkeep of countless monitors with little validation or reviews. This slippery and error-prone process leads to monitor bloat and configuration drift. Critical components get missed while useless checks abound.
MaC paradigms like Checkly eliminate manual grunt work with robust declarations and testing harnessed via automation. Alert noise reduces while coverage gaps vanish – a win-win!
Morgan Stanley‘s Ops Team confirms:
"Checkly‘s MaC abilities enabled us to shift developers left safely. We can spin up and share monitors rapidly without reliability concerns."
2. Smoother Out-of-Hours Handover with On-Calls
Lack of context on alerts received makes on-call transitions painful when something breaks. This delays restoration and frustrates on-call staff churning up a vociferous feedback loop.
MaC systems consolidate troubleshooting data across teams allowing anyone to quickly make sense of issues. This results in up to 3x faster diagnosis and less burnout.
3. Accelerating Monitoring Processes
Business teams often lament monitoring delays from centralized IT teams leading to gaps. MaC breaks bottlenecks with self-serve automation by transferring monitoring responsibilities transparently.
New environments can be monitored immediately without waiting for IT ticketing. Monitoring can finally match business agility.
Monolith monitoring tools restrict insights to just app or infrastructure teams limiting holistic decision data.
MaC artefacts and visualizations grant universal visibility helping separate signal from noise. Both technical and non-technical members can spot areas needing innovation or upgrades.
By dissolving visibility barriers and silos, MaC unlocks innovation potential across cross-functional product teams.
As seen, MaC elevates monitoring from "fw:fw:fw alert" darkness to illuminated pathways for business growth!
Real-World Monitoring as Code Wins
Global industry leaders reap immense benefits from embracing monitoring as code ranging from enhanced customer experience to engineering productivity:
Faster Feature Innovation at Ontruck
Ontruck operates a digital freight exchange network matching loads with road transport capacity. Their ability to rapidly roll out matching algorithms and mobile apps ahead of competition is key to success.
By adopting Checkly‘s MaC paradigm, Ontruck accelerated feature development withouttradeoffs on reliability or security. Their VP Engineering notes:
"Checkly‘s guided onboarding saw us quickly create monitors with guardrails automatically alerting on performance deviations… Our developers feel empowered to build faster while we sleep soundly!"
Smoother Audits for Healthcare Majors
Data compliance is paramount for patient health records in institutions like Welldoc or Walgreens. Periodic infosec audits used to be frustrating affairs earlier.
Leveraging Checkly‘s out-of-box audit trails coupled with on-demand compliance reports allowed both majors to effortlessly achieve ISO and HIPAA certifications.
Walgreens‘s CTO confirmed:
"Checkly‘s security and compliance capabilities are vital for our business… We confidently speed into digital health innovations knowing Checkly‘s got our back!"
24×7 Reliability for Fintech Apps
Kontist operates a popular bills management app serving thousands of users daily. Downtimes are unacceptable in fintech leading to loss of trust.
By leveraging Checkly‘s Hawking daemon for round-the-clock API monitoring, Kontist assures 100% uptime even on weekends. Their site reliability lead beams:
"Checkly‘s 24×7 API heartbeat monitors coupled with brilliant UX checks give us Kremlin-level observability! Our reliability confidence has skyrocketed"
Clearly, Monitoring as Code is delivering immense value catering from startups to Fortune 500s. It your chance to cement competitive advantage with MaC now!
Key Takeaways from Adopting Monitoring as Code
Let‘s recap the key benefits that make a rock-solid case for modern software teams to embrace Monitoring as Code:
š Faster software delivery: MaC automates monitoring workflows offloading grunt work from engineers
š Improved CX and uptime: Tighter detect-diagnose-restore loop lowers outages
š Higher productivity: Aligns workflows between disjointed IT teams improving collaboration
š Lower risk: Continuously validates controls easing audits and compliance
š Future-proofing: Insulates reliability from underlying tech churns enabling innovation
Clearly, transitioning from archaic manual monitoring to progressive MaC is no longer optional but an urgent imperative for digital businesses aiming to accelerate securely.
So are you ready to leverage Monitoring as Code to turbocharge your DevOps outcomes?
Here are smart next steps to embark on your MaC journey successfully:
Level 1: Instrument with MaC Best Practices
- Start small, focused on a single critical workflow
- Expand monitored components progressively based on outcomes
- Bake MaC principles like AI-assisted alert correlation early
Level 2: Scale Centrally Before Distributing Control
- Build centralised monitors for key organisational KPIs
- Gradually decentralize granular monitoring to autonomous teams
- Maintain shared standards for alerting data formats etc.
Level 3: Industrialize Site Reliability Engineering
- Automate entire site reliability processes like incident response
- Harness MaC to enable self-healing and progressive rollbacks
- Let humans focus innovating, not fire-fighting!
Hopefully the above guide gives you clarity and conviction on getting started with Monitoring as Code the right way. Just as technology and business environments evolve rapidly, so should software monitoring tools and culture.
Welcome to the modern world of Monitoring as Code. The future looks bright and observable!
