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Practical Monitoring: Effective Strategies for the Real World
Do you have a nagging feeling that your monitoring needs improvement, but you just aren’t sure where to start or how to do it? Are you plagued by constant, meaningless alerts? Does your monitoring system routinely miss real problems? This is the book for you.
Mike Julian lays out a practical approach to designing and implementing effective monitoring—from your enterprise application down to the hardware in a datacenter, and everything between. Practical Monitoring provides you with straightforward strategies and tactics for designing and implementing a strong monitoring foundation for your company.
This book takes a unique vendor-neutral approach to monitoring. Rather than discuss how to implement specific tools, Mike teaches the principles and underlying mechanics behind monitoring so you can implement the lessons in any tool.
Practical Monitoring covers essential topics
Monitoring antipatternsPrinciples of monitoring designHow to build an effective on-call rotationGetting metrics and logs out of your application
Mike Julian lays out a practical approach to designing and implementing effective monitoring—from your enterprise application down to the hardware in a datacenter, and everything between. Practical Monitoring provides you with straightforward strategies and tactics for designing and implementing a strong monitoring foundation for your company.
This book takes a unique vendor-neutral approach to monitoring. Rather than discuss how to implement specific tools, Mike teaches the principles and underlying mechanics behind monitoring so you can implement the lessons in any tool.
Practical Monitoring covers essential topics
Monitoring antipatternsPrinciples of monitoring designHow to build an effective on-call rotationGetting metrics and logs out of your application
229 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 26, 2017
114 people are currently reading
430 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
January 28, 2023
Good straight forward monitoring book - great as a general and high level refresher. Especially great for anyone that’s new to the monitoring world.
This is going to go on my list of recommendations for all junior engineers and not only
This is going to go on my list of recommendations for all junior engineers and not only
December 28, 2018
This book is very abstract. Most chapters were more like introductions into topics but actual topics were not developed. I've missed actual best practices, shared personal experience. I've missed exact tools named with explanations why those were picked over others (yes, author named few tools but also tried avoid suggesting something more specific). I've missed discussion on scaling issues. Maybe monitoring topic itself can not be as deep? Or maybe my expectations were different?
Read if you know nothing about monitoring, KPIs or on-call. Though there are better books touching those areas e.g. "Site Reliability Engineering" from Google.
Skip in other cases to save your time.
Read if you know nothing about monitoring, KPIs or on-call. Though there are better books touching those areas e.g. "Site Reliability Engineering" from Google.
Skip in other cases to save your time.
August 30, 2018
A short and easy book, that can quickly give you very basics of monitoring, or help a bit with organizing what you already know, if you have a bit of experience with application monitoring.
August 16, 2020
A good introduction/refresher to monitoring notions and facets; it is heavy in concepts and light in examples.
January 7, 2022
Good book covering all the facets of the monitoring, knowing that they cant cover it on depth and giving resources and information to look after for every chapter, but still letting you know the most important thing you should know on every field.
January 12, 2020
Was it easy to read: Not as fun and well written as Eloquent Ruby, but still quite an easy read for a technical book.
What I liked about it: It really delivered what it promised. It is a concise guide to the basics of monitoring. Covering broad range of topics starting from patterns and antipatterns and going through different areas: frontend monitoring, application monitoring, server monitoring etc. Though I was already familiar with most of the ideas, it was nice to seem them summarized well in one place. Also I have to admit, I used to think “monitoring” and “application monitoring” is pretty much the same thing. Now I know there are more monitoring types out there.
What I disliked: My goal was to learn more about application monitoring and get some tips and tricks for it. So the book, being an overview of multiple types of monitoring, was a bit broad and shallow for my purpose.
Ideas/ Quotes:
“It’s not ready for production until it is monitored.”
Monitoring ought to be automatic. Question “Can you add this to monitoring” shouldn’t be needed.
“If software engineers are aware of the struggles that come up during on call and they themselves are part of the rotation, then they are incentivized to build better software.”
What I liked about it: It really delivered what it promised. It is a concise guide to the basics of monitoring. Covering broad range of topics starting from patterns and antipatterns and going through different areas: frontend monitoring, application monitoring, server monitoring etc. Though I was already familiar with most of the ideas, it was nice to seem them summarized well in one place. Also I have to admit, I used to think “monitoring” and “application monitoring” is pretty much the same thing. Now I know there are more monitoring types out there.
What I disliked: My goal was to learn more about application monitoring and get some tips and tricks for it. So the book, being an overview of multiple types of monitoring, was a bit broad and shallow for my purpose.
Ideas/ Quotes:
“It’s not ready for production until it is monitored.”
Monitoring ought to be automatic. Question “Can you add this to monitoring” shouldn’t be needed.
“If software engineers are aware of the struggles that come up during on call and they themselves are part of the rotation, then they are incentivized to build better software.”
January 31, 2018
A brilliant information-dense book on monitoring that does justice to the subject. While it only covers the philosophy (with pointers and references to tools when appropriate). This is an excellent book that any software developer and devops person should read, understand and internalise. I liked how much detail it went into (mostly covering the why and a little of the hows) while not being dogmatic about tools. The book is filled with good practical hard fought advice that I often found myself nodding to. Even if you have been writing and deploying software for a while this book will teach you something new for sure (whether it is a tool or a way to collect and monitor data or a way to interpret results of a tool or even a simple command to see some some disk / network statistic).
My only gripe (and the reason for 4 and not 5 stars) is the section on security and the fact that the book is not longer than it could be. Overall a very good read.
My only gripe (and the reason for 4 and not 5 stars) is the section on security and the fact that the book is not longer than it could be. Overall a very good read.
August 27, 2019
The book is very good for beginners and also for people who wants to have a structured reference for monitoring.
First part of the book goes over the principles, patterns and anti-patterns and related fields (on-call, incident management, statistics)
Second part give nice overall on different applications of monitoring (Business KPIs, frontend, application, server, network and security)
The balance of chapters can be improved, on some chapters (especially on network) the author goes into very detailed information with solid recommendations, and on some chapters are not in the same detail.
There is a part at the end which gives a nice assessment on a sample application. Couple more examples would show better reasoning of decisions made on different environments.
Overall, I think this is a nice book that covers a wide area and summarises the information into an easily digestible read.
First part of the book goes over the principles, patterns and anti-patterns and related fields (on-call, incident management, statistics)
Second part give nice overall on different applications of monitoring (Business KPIs, frontend, application, server, network and security)
The balance of chapters can be improved, on some chapters (especially on network) the author goes into very detailed information with solid recommendations, and on some chapters are not in the same detail.
There is a part at the end which gives a nice assessment on a sample application. Couple more examples would show better reasoning of decisions made on different environments.
Overall, I think this is a nice book that covers a wide area and summarises the information into an easily digestible read.
December 15, 2022
کتاب جالبی بود. حرفایی که همیشه میشنید و زده بود و تقریبا هیچ چیز جدیدی نداشت
چندتا از این جالب هاشو میذارم ولی در کل این کتاب برای کسانی خوبه که هیچ ایده از مانیتورینگ ندارند
Tools are a manifestation of ways of working, of assumptions, of cultural and social norms. Those norms are unlikely to map directly to the norms of your own team.
monitoring is not a job - it’s a skill, and it’s a skill everyone on your team should have to some degree.
Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together.
A tool-driven team will not be effective as a mission-driven team. When the mission is defined by running software, analysts become captive to the features and limitations of their tools. Analysts who think in terms of what they need in order to accomplish their mission will seek tools to meet
those needs, and keep looking if their requirements aren’t met. Sometimes they even decide to build their own tools.
there are no silver bullets.
چندتا از این جالب هاشو میذارم ولی در کل این کتاب برای کسانی خوبه که هیچ ایده از مانیتورینگ ندارند
Tools are a manifestation of ways of working, of assumptions, of cultural and social norms. Those norms are unlikely to map directly to the norms of your own team.
monitoring is not a job - it’s a skill, and it’s a skill everyone on your team should have to some degree.
Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together.
A tool-driven team will not be effective as a mission-driven team. When the mission is defined by running software, analysts become captive to the features and limitations of their tools. Analysts who think in terms of what they need in order to accomplish their mission will seek tools to meet
those needs, and keep looking if their requirements aren’t met. Sometimes they even decide to build their own tools.
there are no silver bullets.
February 23, 2021
Quick read and great introductory book for systems monitoring.
The book is split into 2 parts: principles and tactics. The first part is overly generic and might be useful only for someone who is completely new to monitoring. The second part has chapters application monitoring, server monitoring, network monitoring and security monitoring. There is also a "chapter" about frontend monitoring, but that's very very light and not particularly useful.
The book also gives a few tips on which metrics to choose for your business, and how to manage alerting and on-call rotation.
I think I would have rated the book 5 stars if it had contained more real-life scenarios (like the one described in chapter 11) and a few recommendations for books/articles at the end of each chapter.
The book is split into 2 parts: principles and tactics. The first part is overly generic and might be useful only for someone who is completely new to monitoring. The second part has chapters application monitoring, server monitoring, network monitoring and security monitoring. There is also a "chapter" about frontend monitoring, but that's very very light and not particularly useful.
The book also gives a few tips on which metrics to choose for your business, and how to manage alerting and on-call rotation.
I think I would have rated the book 5 stars if it had contained more real-life scenarios (like the one described in chapter 11) and a few recommendations for books/articles at the end of each chapter.
September 20, 2018
Fulfills its promise - it's supposed to be an introductory level book about monitoring that doesn't cover any particular technology & ... it's exactly that. Even so, it's not boring, but well structured & tidy enough to help in organizing further research.
I agree with both how the elephant is sliced & with particular priorities/suggestions regarding real-life monitoring situations.
Good stuff that probably won't rock your world - but a decent help in organizing infra/SRE/platform teams of modern era.
I agree with both how the elephant is sliced & with particular priorities/suggestions regarding real-life monitoring situations.
Good stuff that probably won't rock your world - but a decent help in organizing infra/SRE/platform teams of modern era.
February 4, 2022
It was fine. I guess I was expecting something more focused or specific. "Monitoring" is pretty broad, and this does a fly-over of the many different kinds, with (spoiler!) practical-if-general suggestions on strategies and specific tools. I guess I was hoping for a deeper dive on something within the monitoring/alerting domain ... but I'll be damned if I could tell you what would have made me feel more satisfied here.
If you're new to the domain of monitoring/alerting, this is probably a great way to get bootstrapped though. YMMV
If you're new to the domain of monitoring/alerting, this is probably a great way to get bootstrapped though. YMMV
March 2, 2019
I feel like this is one of those books that can be foundational on ones bookshelf. I’m not well read enough to know if the concepts here are discussed better elsewhere, but the concepts here were exactly as I would have expected.
In an area that’s often conflated and misrepresented, I found the authors transition from theory to practical examples perfect.
I’m glad to have invested my time in this book, I suspect it will pay dividends.
In an area that’s often conflated and misrepresented, I found the authors transition from theory to practical examples perfect.
I’m glad to have invested my time in this book, I suspect it will pay dividends.
July 14, 2021
Some might find it abstract, expecting a detailed breakdown of tools and how to configure them to achieve a working implementation. Instead, this book focuses on the decision process and considerations towards setting up, as the title says, a practical approach to monitoring.
Tools change over time, and obsolescence is a constant in this industry. I personally enjoy reading about the fundamentals and how/why things work they way they do, and this book meets that expectation for me.
Tools change over time, and obsolescence is a constant in this industry. I personally enjoy reading about the fundamentals and how/why things work they way they do, and this book meets that expectation for me.
June 4, 2023
I expected a bit more from this book, but it still turned out to be a good one. An interesting chapter about what you need to monitor, with a focus on what brings value to the company and what users see. A pretty long and elaborate explanation what you need to monitor as a SRE engineer, but it seemed to be a bit outdated and not interesting for developers. But the book is easy to read and it is fairly short, was a good investment of my time.
December 27, 2017
Good starter kit to get teams thinking about monitoring. If you're in a cloud environment the section on network monitoring probably won't be relevant, but this would be a good resource to use as a springboard for exploring other topics more deeply.
I would have liked to have gone into greater depth on many of the topics, but for the goal of this book the author did a good job of being succinct.
I would have liked to have gone into greater depth on many of the topics, but for the goal of this book the author did a good job of being succinct.
March 22, 2018
Good book. Gives a high level overview about Monitoring and the various aspects of it. It is good for someone who is beginning to build a website or application and wants to monitor it.
There are also pointers to tools though not specifically any particular tool. Good place to start with for monitoring.
There are also pointers to tools though not specifically any particular tool. Good place to start with for monitoring.
August 19, 2019
Good summary of monitoring
Practical Monitoring is a quick read, but it’s packed with “don’t do” tips (anti-patterns), good tips on how to proceed with monitoring in general, and some tips on specific types of monitoring. It has plenty of links for information on each topic. Mike Julian clearly knows his stuff in this area.
Practical Monitoring is a quick read, but it’s packed with “don’t do” tips (anti-patterns), good tips on how to proceed with monitoring in general, and some tips on specific types of monitoring. It has plenty of links for information on each topic. Mike Julian clearly knows his stuff in this area.
April 5, 2020
Überblick und Tipps für das Monitoring von Anwendungen, Systemen und Netzwerken. Es wird der Umgang mit Logs, Metriken und Alerts beschrieben. Der Autor hat viel Erfahrung in dem Bereich sammeln können und gibt praxistaugliche Tipps ohne dabei zu tief ins Detail zu gehen oder sich auf einzelne Produkte bzw. Technologien zu beschränken.
April 8, 2020
Pretty good one for a starter. Coming from the monitoring world which is my day job, I found this book to be a good primer. If you’re specifically looking to get specialized insights into specific technology stack, then, this may not be the one. But, as the author states at the start of the book, this book is a technology agnostic one and it does the job perfectly good.
May 31, 2021
I'm not sure I'd recommend this book, but it does provide a good outline and structure for thinking about monitoring. No individual section felt super useful from a practical point of view, but the overall structure and organization was very good. I'll be using the notes I took here as a skeleton as I flesh out my monitoring knowledge.
March 7, 2018
An intermediate-level intro to the world of monitoring. Since the focus is on principles and best practices, the reader may benefit from bringing some prior real world experience. Highly recommended when you're looking to up your monitoring game!
March 29, 2019
Quick read covering the foundations of monitoring.
Certainly agree with the title. The book is practical. The author makes specific suggestions and provide opinions that feel like based on real life examples and experiences.
It covers 2 areas in particular, which depending on your area of expertise, you may not be very familiar with: security monitoring & network monitoring. At a very high level but still enough to get started.
The rest of the areas covered tend to be less obscure given the multiple tools & information nowadays: logging, alerting, business metrics, black box/white box, automation, etc.
I think it's a good book to reference as a checklist for your org and understand if you're missing something critical in your monitoring strategy.
Certainly agree with the title. The book is practical. The author makes specific suggestions and provide opinions that feel like based on real life examples and experiences.
It covers 2 areas in particular, which depending on your area of expertise, you may not be very familiar with: security monitoring & network monitoring. At a very high level but still enough to get started.
The rest of the areas covered tend to be less obscure given the multiple tools & information nowadays: logging, alerting, business metrics, black box/white box, automation, etc.
I think it's a good book to reference as a checklist for your org and understand if you're missing something critical in your monitoring strategy.
December 20, 2020
This book is a simple introduction to monitoring. Useful for those with little experience and timely reminder of relating metrics and logs to what truly matters and drive the business aka the observability movement.
March 6, 2022
This book helped me a lot
By reading this book I have learned how to plan effectively for monitoring IT systems and infrastructure. I recommend it for everyone who want to start with monitoring
By reading this book I have learned how to plan effectively for monitoring IT systems and infrastructure. I recommend it for everyone who want to start with monitoring
August 17, 2023
Just fine for someone with time in monitoring, but wants to get some structure to the knowledge gained by work experience.
Not a book for an experienced professional, but that is stated in the introduction anyway.
Not a book for an experienced professional, but that is stated in the introduction anyway.
January 15, 2018
Looks at monitoring at many levels.
Mentions specific tools for monitoring applications and systems.
Mentions specific tools for monitoring applications and systems.
February 23, 2018
Practical advice
February 26, 2018
Very good introduction to monitoring, for somebody new to monitoring
October 13, 2018
Great beginner book but felt like alot of filler. I was expecting business level tried and true strategies for monitoring based on experience. Though there was a few gems, I was left wanting.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews