Let’s get a little trippy. In light of the major Datadog outage on Wednesday, people were asking, “Who is the Datadog for Datadog?”
When an important tool like Datadog is down – how can you tell if it’s down or back up again without constantly checking status pages or social media?
Well That’s Where Metrist comes in.
Monitoring for Monitoring for Monitoring
It’s common to have tools like Datadog to monitor your own software, but how can you monitor your monitoring software? Or other SaaS/cloud dependencies like AWS, Github, and Twilio?
One way to get real-time updates (i.e. about 25 mins+ faster than status pages or social media) about dependency outages is the free Metrist.io app and Slack integration. All you have to do is set up a free account and download the Slack app to stay on top of major outages.
But everyone experiences outages differently, which is why you can set up personalized monitoring through Metrist. This way you can see exactly how (or if) an outage is affecting your software and better understand how to respond to such outages.
How Does Metrist Alert So Quickly?
Metrist uses functional monitoring to constantly test multiple, critical aspects of the most important cloud dependencies. This way, we can tell when and where an outages is occurring. And with the personalized setup, you can tell exactly how it’s affecting your software.
But the real speed comes with the free a Slack integration so you can keep on top of outages as soon as they happen. But why is there a time delay between Metrist and status pages?
Status Pages Are Manual
An important thing to know about the vast majority of status pages is that they are updated manually. As a result, they won’t have real-time data about outages. Instead, there will always be a time delay between the actual outage and when a vendor reports that outage on their status page.
If they report the outage at all.
One reason vendors don’t report outages is that, as mentioned above, outages don’t affect everyone the same. So unless there’s a huge, global outage like Datadog’s, the vendor might not report it because while it’s throwing some customers for a loop, it’s not affecting others. (But that doesn’t help you if you’re experiencing an outage.
Further, status pages may take even longer to update customers that outages are back to normal because vendors don’t want to speak too soon. But that doesn’t help you if you’re waiting on the status page to update in order to get back to work. Having real-time alerts could help you get on with your life faster than waiting on a vendor’s status page to manually update.
How You Can Stay On Top of Outages Next Time
So how can you know about outages without having to check status pages or social next time? Or know when outages are back online as soon as they’re resolved (not when vendors are ready to report)?
You can sign up for the Metrist.io app and download the Slack integration. It’s free!
And if you want to set up personalized monitoring, let us know and we can get you set up.
