Log data provides the most granular view into what is happening across your systems, applications, and end users. Logs can show you where the issues are in real-time, and provide a historical trending view over time. Logs give you the whole picture.
Logentries, a log management and analytics service built for the cloud, has announced a new integration with Slack, the team communication platform, to enable real-time system and application monitoring. Users of both services can now receive real-time notifications, log-level details with timestamps, and event context inside of designated Slack team channels. The custom integration helps users to consolidate the number of tools they are using by bringing together these two must-have DevOps services. The real-time alerts sent from Logentries to Slack provide the necessary information to enable users to understand what happened across their systems and applications, and take action quickly.

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This is Part Four in a four-part series. In Part One, I focused on the critical first step of defining DevOps with a purpose by thinking about DevOps in the context of your organization’s applications. In Part Two, I provided four tips to fostering a DevOps culture in your organization. In Part Three, I discussed the role of tools and how they can amplify (or constrain) individual and team abilities as well as work across teams.

In this final fourth part of the series, I’m going to weave the three previous topics of (A)pplications, (C)ulture, and (T)ools together and will show how you can ACT with purpose to start your own DevOps transformation. Your DevOps strategy should incorporate all three aspects of applications, culture, and tools. Given the breadth of those three areas, thought, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed from the start. Here’s a tip I learned from a mentor a few years ago. Whether you are a CEO, VP, or team leader, smart leaders set a vision (often at least two or three years out) and then they make small decisions every week with the goal of generally moving the organization or team in the direction of the vision over time.

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Research conducted by Forrester and commissioned by EnterpriseDB (EDB) has found nearly half (42%) of respondents are struggling to manage the NoSQL solutions deployed in their environments.

The study sheds more light on the NoSQL vs relational database discussion facing companies looking to store data today. NoSQL providers will explain their technology is pivotal to deal with increasing changes in terms of processing power, scale and speed; yet according to EDB, relational database providers are slowly clawing back ground and are evolving to support new data capabilities.

Statistics from the report make for interesting reading:

• A third (30%) of respondents said data stored in NoSQL solutions was creating data siloes
• 36% said they want to link their unstructured data with their structured data most of the time
• More than half (52%) said they were unable to prevent developers from deploying new apps on separate NoSQL databases

It’s worth noting here that the majority of the survey results point towards one database to solve all needs – and lo and behold, EDB is pushing out a solution which does exactly that. Yet the more interesting takeaway is the position of relational databases – traditionally the older, poorer relation to the NoSQL players – in the discussion.

Bob Wiederhold, CEO of NoSQL vendor Couchbase, who most recently worked to scale Facebook hit game Cookie Jam, told this publication back in 2013 that NoSQL will “dominate and ultimately…cause Oracle, IBM, SAP and others to have a very difficult time.”

Yet EDB seems to disagree. “Relational databases – and Postgres especially – have responded to changing data demands and incorporated capabilities for managing unstructured data as well as traditional structured data types,” said EDB chief exec Ed Boyajian in a statement.

“Today’s applications are more demanding, and using multiple different database solutions to support them creates problems with usability, adds cost and complexity and poses greater risk for the enterprise,” he added.

Elsewhere, SQL database management providers NuoDB has put out a relational database competitive analysis chart, comparing each vendor to various capabilities including availability, programming languages and multi-tenancy among others. Naturally, NuoDB puts itself firmly at the top of the pile, but it’s still an interesting examination, which can be seen here.

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Strong security is a foundational element of every public, private and hybrid cloud implementation and will be a top concern for all businesses as part of a macro trend taking grip in 2015. Research shows that 90 percent of the world’s data has been generated in the past two years – calling into question not only data storage, but also data safety.

When it comes to security in the cloud, disaster recovery (DR), backup and latency are crucial elements, In fact, reports show that for 60 percent of businesses, data loss is a result of not having a fully documented DR plan. That’s why it is important for the customer to understand the difference between simple backups, data replication and a comprehensive DR plan with RTO/RPO that complements the larger business continuity plan (BC) – something that is quickly becoming a compliance necessity, especially in healthcare and ecommerce industries. Archival data, data at rest and data under compliance retention requirements are the types of data that are ideal for the cloud because fast access and high-performance retrieval are not usually requirements and low-cost storage and back-up methods work perfectly well.

A cloud provider invested in a customer’s success can also help ensure businesses develop an effective, tailored and secure IT solution to prevent loss. Atlanta-based electronic health care aggregation company, Wellcentive, for example, protected and backed up data by adopting a hybrid mix of virtualized and collocated servers with Peak 10, overall strengthening its IT business solutions, strengthening its relationship with service providers and providing safety and security to its diverse client base.

Creating a cloud storage and backup strategy forces a company to reassess its storage requirements, and to evaluate the relative values of data and applications to the business. Only then can it provision the correct combination of protection, access, and storage type best matched to its requirements, legal obligations and budget. Furthermore, the ability of a cloud vendor to quickly and effectively identify and respond to any type of security threat or an actual breach is absolutely critical to security, protecting the customer’s data assets and minimizing data loss and downtime. A cloud provider/MSP should readily be able to provide its DR and business continuity plan that can include some of the following criteria:

• A definitive response time and latency involved in responding to both the incident itself and informing the business of any issues
• The specific methods and mechanisms used to identify any emergency
• The types of security emergencies the provider is equipped to manage
• The duration of an emergency that the cloud vendor can sustain and the specific processes for failover/fail back to the primary operations mode
• How the cloud provider’s internal security practitioners will respond, react and communicate with each other to respond to and resolve the issue and take the necessary remedial actions, and how that will be communicated back to the customer

Suffice to say, backups in the cloud are instrumental to a business’s overall productivity and functionality, but it is important not to forget the underlying foundation of any successful partnership – trust. A provider that incorporates this aspect into its operational practices, and goes to extraordinary efforts to ensure the customer gets what he or she is expecting to, and provides a unique solution with optimal efficiency will be better prepared to not only employ thorough backup but also, proactively handle any security mishap.

Dale Kim is the Director of Industry Solutions at MapR. His background includes a variety of technical and management roles at information technology companies. While his experience includes work with relational databases, much of his career pertains to non-relational data in the areas of search, content management, and NoSQL, and includes senior roles in technical marketing, sales engineering, and support engineering. Dale holds an MBA from Santa Clara University, and a BA in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Entuity®, a provider of enterprise-class network management solutions, today announced that it solidifies its position as a market leader through global enterprise customer acquisitions and a refined channel strategy. In 2014, Entuity increased new license revenues in EMEA by over 75 percent, and LATAM by over 125 percent as customers embraced Entuity for its highly automated solution and unified architecture. Entuity’s refined channel strategy focuses on even deeper strategic alignment with key partners such as BMC Software and Dell Networking.

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Wireless M2M or IoT sensors and 3D modeling and visualization tools enable you to see and monitor conditions at distance – in real-time. Visualization tools like those from SVS Innovations make it possible to digitally model in 3D, with great accuracy, an object or a building and to see the sensor data in real-time. Visualization and tactile feedback tools can then be used to quickly inform you of changing conditions, alerts, patterns or variations in activity or data patterns. Sensor data, visualization and tactile feedback tools can truly augment your reality all on your smartphone or tablet.

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The Solr Redis Plugin is an extension for Solr that provides a query parser that uses data stored in Redis. It is open-sourced on Github by Sematext. This tool is basically a QParserPlugin that establishes a connection to Redis and takes data stored in SET, ZRANGE and other Redis data structures in order to build a query. Data fetched from Redis is used in RedisQParser and is responsible for building a query. Moreover, this plugin provides a highlighter extension which can be used to highlight parts of aliased Solr Redis queries (this will be described in a future).

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Exploiting weak identity credentials is one of the most common elements of most attacks. Even attacks that seem unrelated to users, such as recent point of sale (POS) attacks at well-known retailers like the ones you have mentioned, can be traced to insecure passwords. Often, the same password is repeated for all organizations managed by the POS vendor, and once it is stolen, it essentially becomes a default password and the attackers can gain knowledge of the customer base.

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