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Web Operations: Keeping the Data on Time
A web application involves many specialists, but it takes people in web ops to ensure that everything works together throughout an application's lifetime. It's the expertise you need when your start-up gets an unexpected spike in web traffic, or when a new feature causes your mature application to fail. In this collection of essays and interviews, web veterans such as Theo Schlossnagle, Baron Schwartz, and Alistair Croll offer insights into this evolving field. You'll learn stories from the trenches--from builders of some of the biggest sites on the Web--on what's necessary to help a site thrive.Learn the skills needed in web operations, and why they're gained through experience rather than schoolingUnderstand why it's important to gather metrics from both your application and infrastructureConsider common approaches to database architectures and the pitfalls that come with increasing scaleLearn how to handle the human side of outages and degradationsFind out how one company avoided disaster after a huge traffic delugeDiscover what went wrong after a problem occurs, and how to prevent it from happening againContributors AllspawHeather ChampMichael ChristianRichard CookAlistair CrollPatrick DeboisEric FlorenzanoPaul HammondJustin HuffAdam JacobJacob LoomisMatt MassieBrian MoonAnoop NagwaniSean PowerEric RiesTheo SchlossnagleBaron SchwartzAndrew Shafer
338 pages, ebook
First published June 21, 2010
41 people are currently reading
834 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
November 3, 2020
This book is from 2010; 10 years is a long time in the software industry. I hesitated to read this book, being afraid it would be completely outdated.
Two things;
1. The tools used did change. Today's monitoring solutions have different names. Still, the logic of tracking application behavior and especially the system as experienced by the user, is of utmost importance for today's web operations.
2. Tools may have changed, but not the way devs and ops behave. (Especially during an outage.) The postmortem and war stories, being about an outage, a system scaling up, or how to choose the metrics to monitor are lessons you can learn without having to pay the price of making the mistakes done and graciously shared in the book.
Also, it's a fast read, and it's easy to spot the chapters which are likely to be outdated/less relevant given today's tools. I highly recommend chapter 13 on post mortems and chapter 11 on "How your users feel: user-facing metrics" for their eyes-opening potential. (as an engineer, it's easy to focus on CPU usage, I/O, etc. where the actual value of monitoring is knowing whether your service delivers as expected to the final user.)
A 4.5/5
Two things;
1. The tools used did change. Today's monitoring solutions have different names. Still, the logic of tracking application behavior and especially the system as experienced by the user, is of utmost importance for today's web operations.
2. Tools may have changed, but not the way devs and ops behave. (Especially during an outage.) The postmortem and war stories, being about an outage, a system scaling up, or how to choose the metrics to monitor are lessons you can learn without having to pay the price of making the mistakes done and graciously shared in the book.
Also, it's a fast read, and it's easy to spot the chapters which are likely to be outdated/less relevant given today's tools. I highly recommend chapter 13 on post mortems and chapter 11 on "How your users feel: user-facing metrics" for their eyes-opening potential. (as an engineer, it's easy to focus on CPU usage, I/O, etc. where the actual value of monitoring is knowing whether your service delivers as expected to the final user.)
A 4.5/5
September 18, 2012
A great insight into the world of web operations with a collection of essays by a number of authors with real-world experience and learnings from failures. The chapter I thought was the best (probably because I agree with and could relate to a lot of what was said) was Chapter 16. "Agile Infrastructure" by Andrew Clay Shafer. I particularly like this statement "All technology problems are people problems. People are the solution. Every bug, every failure, every outage, every recovery was set in motion by people".
December 26, 2015
Almost each chapter has a different author and that is visible in the style of the book - you have to read each chapter differently. In some places, I find the book a bit too vague. It is full of good practice advice, but you have to already be a professional to understand/resonate with some of them.
I enjoy reading other people's 'war stories' and this book has some of those - these are good ways to find out why 'good practices' make sense.
I enjoy reading other people's 'war stories' and this book has some of those - these are good ways to find out why 'good practices' make sense.
January 27, 2015
The book is divided into several chapters, each one written by different author and covering different topic. Some are really interesting and contain tons of practical knowledge, some are simply rants.
If you work in operations, especially on large-scale system, this book is for you.
If you work in operations, especially on large-scale system, this book is for you.
August 2, 2023
A collection of articles/interviews/essays from the ancients. Some worked better than others: it's weird to get technical advice from people who were unironically using fucking PHP or MySQL in 2010. However, it was mildly entertaining to read about actual experiences. My favourite one was probably the dude who didn't realize how thoroughly captured by idiots Agile would be. Or maybe the guy with random irrational hate for DNS, I'm not sure.
April 4, 2018
bible for (web) operations, in the sense that it gives meaning to what you do and why you do it and what it is all for, in the end when i completed the last page; my heart swelled with pride : I'm WebOps!
January 26, 2018
Essential reading for any dev who wants to participate in devops.
November 27, 2018
If you are new to IT, this book is a MUST.
July 14, 2021
Okay, but outdated. Even the highly cited Ch 13 on Postmortems has better alternatives these days.
Want to read
August 8, 2021Recommended at https://twitter.com/jgoldschrafe/stat...
March 3, 2011
I work in the operations group of a very large web property, so I'm the target audience for this book. However, I would recommend it to just about any system administrator, because most of the information in this book is widely applicable to our profession.
This is a collection of essays by different authors, so the quality is a bit uneven. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that some of the topics were just boring to me. No big deal though, just skip to the next chapter.
My favorite essay was probably Agile Infrastructure, in which Andrew Clay Shafer outlines some excellent ways to bring the agile development methodology to Operations. I particularly like his idea of 'pair firefighting' - bringing the pair programming concept to those times of crisis when you are working to fix some major production crisis.
I should also put in a plug for How to Make Failure Beautiful, in which Jake Loomis describes how to use postmortems to sensibly improve how you respond to and learn from crisis. Full disclosure: Jake used to be be my boss. However that does mean I can vouch for the effectiveness of his strategies.
The big takeaway here is that it is possible to think logically and sensibly about the world of Operations. You don't always have to be in crisis mode. I wish more people thought carefully about the ideas in this book them maybe our profession wouldn't suffer such high rates of disillusionment and burnout.
This is a collection of essays by different authors, so the quality is a bit uneven. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that some of the topics were just boring to me. No big deal though, just skip to the next chapter.
My favorite essay was probably Agile Infrastructure, in which Andrew Clay Shafer outlines some excellent ways to bring the agile development methodology to Operations. I particularly like his idea of 'pair firefighting' - bringing the pair programming concept to those times of crisis when you are working to fix some major production crisis.
I should also put in a plug for How to Make Failure Beautiful, in which Jake Loomis describes how to use postmortems to sensibly improve how you respond to and learn from crisis. Full disclosure: Jake used to be be my boss. However that does mean I can vouch for the effectiveness of his strategies.
The big takeaway here is that it is possible to think logically and sensibly about the world of Operations. You don't always have to be in crisis mode. I wish more people thought carefully about the ideas in this book them maybe our profession wouldn't suffer such high rates of disillusionment and burnout.
January 17, 2012
Lovely collection of essays regarding the evolution of operations practice. Particularly driven by big web properties like Flickr. In common with most essay collections the collection is overall judged by it's weakest members. The good news is that all the essays contained here are good. Some of them are great but all are of a high standard. If you get a chance read the how complex systems fail essay, great adaptation across fields. Many of the essays have stories in them and explain by simply building through the stories the what and the how of the practice undre examination. All in all a lovely book with a collection of motivating and thought provoking ideas.
November 12, 2015
This book is a must read for anyone working in systems administration and operations in general, not just web operations. The collective experience of the contributors is nearly unprecedented in the industry. The best thing about the book is the emphasis on ways of thinking, planning and working with teams rather than on the tools, although the tools are used to illustrate principles. I can't recommend it highly enough.
July 22, 2010
This book isn't written for me--I am not a tech guy--but I market to tech people and so I read this book to understand what's important to them. An interesting experience--akin to being an outsider at a cocktail party. But a well-written book and I really enjoyed the discussions of web operations culture (much more than the tech stuff which, naturally, went right over my head).
September 8, 2015
Это сборник 17 увесистых статей о технической поддержки web сайтов. Начиная от совсем общих - развитии как специалиста, диагностики и бекапах. Заканчивая тонкостями работы. Особенно понравились главы про реляционные БД, и непрерывную интеграцию. Я бы сказал "мудрая книга", у всех авторов чувствуется огромный опыт.
July 20, 2011
I have not read a lot of IT books, covering vast concepts, overviews of general problems, and solving paths. This books offers all that. It covers real problems and offers way of thinking and methodology of approaching the solutions. I really liked it!
December 28, 2011
This covers pretty much everything you need to know about running a large website, from all angles: people, process, and technology. It's a great primer, and it's written by the people behind some of the largest sites around, with plenty of battle scars.
July 30, 2013
If I had the option, I would probably have given this book at 2.5 instead of a 2. Some chapters were really interesting and I learned some new ideas. Other chapters were less interesting and it was harder to keep interested in the book.
November 19, 2016
This is a collection of articles by various experts , so no particular sequence needed to be followed. An excellent book with insights on the world of web operations. Concepts and learnings are applicable to small and large scale operations alike.
October 18, 2010
good real world accounts on scaling web sites, nice pointers to tools and best practises.
Fascinating insite in the world of web ops, makes me glad I'm not doing that for a living ;-)
Fascinating insite in the world of web ops, makes me glad I'm not doing that for a living ;-)
February 14, 2011
Good user stories of the evolving industry in large scale web deployments.
January 23, 2012
Solid book. Has great examples that help bridge the gap between operations and management.
April 17, 2014
Started reading it, and jumped to different parts. Operation is certainly is huge area, this books seems to cover pretty many of what needs to be understood.
October 20, 2012
Lots of very useful information, although the books editing is spotty and the content is sometimes repetitive.
November 11, 2012
Книга уверенно входит в мой ТОП-10 книг 2012 года.
November 16, 2012
Very good book, gives you a wide perspective of webops which does include a lot more than servers.
February 12, 2013
Good overview and advice on running web scale operations. Infrastructure as a code, Kanban and shared stories of experienced gurus.
February 20, 2013
Excellent book. There were a number of great topics discussed by practitioners and industry experts from a variety of backgrounds.
March 27, 2013
This book is pretty good, covers a lot of ground from experience from many author that actually faces this problem. Many good idea which hopefully I am able to try out. Highly recommended
August 9, 2013
Clearly an important book for anyone responsible of web operations. It's all there!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews