Screaming in the Cloud

Episode 31: Hey Sam, wake up. It’s 3am, and time to solve a murder mystery!

Listen Later

Have you ever been on-call duty as an IT person or otherwise? Woken up at 3 a.m. to solve a problem? Did you have to go through log files or look at a dashboard to figure out what was going on? Did you think there has got to be a better way to troubleshoot and solve problems?

Today, we’re talking to Sam Bashton, who previously ran a premiere consulting partner with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Recently, he started runbook.cloud, which is a tool built on top of serverless technology that helps people find and troubleshoot problems within their AWS environment.

Some of the highlights of the show include:

  • Runbook.cloud looks at metrics to generate machine learning (ML) intelligence to pinpoint issues and present users with a pre-written set of solutions
  • Runbook.cloud looks at all potential problems that can be detected in context with how the infrastructure is being used without being annoying and useless
  • ML is used to do trend analysis and understand how a specific customer is using a service for a specific auto scaling group or Lambda functions
  • Runbook.cloud takes all aggregate data to influence alerts; if there’s a problem in a specific region with a specific service, the tool is careful to caveat it
  • Various monitoring solutions are on the market; runbook.cloud is designed for a mass market environment; it takes metrics that AWS provides for free and makes it so you don’t need to worry about them
  • Will runbook.cloud compete with or sell out to AWS? Amazon wants to build underlying infrastructure, other people to use its APIs to build interfaces for users
  • Runbook.cloud is sold through AWS Marketplace; it’s a subscription service where you pay by the hour and the charges are added to your AWS bill
  • Amazon vs. Other Cloud Providers: Work is involved to detect problems that address multiple Clouds; it doesn’t make sense to branch out to other Clouds
  • Runbook.cloud was built on top of serverless technology for business financial reasons; way to align outlay and costs because you pay for exactly what you use
  • Analysis paralysis is real; it comes down to getting the emotional toil of making decisions down to as few decision points as possible
  • Save money on Lambda; instead of using several Lambda functions concurrently, put everything into a single function using Go
  • AWS responds to customers to discover how they use its services; it comes down to what customers need

    • Links:

    • Sam Bashton on Twitter
    • runbook.cloud
    • How We Massively Reduced Our AWS Lambda Bill with Go
    • AWS
    • AWS Lambda
    • Microsoft Clippy
    • Honeycomb
    • AWS X-Ray
    • Kubernetes
    • Simon Wardley
    • Go
    • Secrets Manager
    • DynamoDB
    • EFS
    • Digital Ocean
      • .
      ...more
      View all episodesView all episodes
      Download on the App Store
      Screaming in the CloudBy Corey Quinn
      • 4.7
      • 4.7
      • 4.7
      • 4.7
      • 4.7

      4.7

      92 ratings

      More shows like Screaming in the Cloud

      View all
      Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers by se-radio@computer.org

      Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers

      272 Listeners

      The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source by Changelog Media

      The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

      284 Listeners

      The Cloudcast by Massive Studios

      The Cloudcast

      152 Listeners

      Thoughtworks Technology Podcast by Thoughtworks

      Thoughtworks Technology Podcast

      40 Listeners

      Software Engineering Daily by Software Engineering Daily

      Software Engineering Daily

      621 Listeners

      Soft Skills Engineering by Jamison Dance and Dave Smith

      Soft Skills Engineering

      269 Listeners

      AWS Podcast by Amazon Web Services

      AWS Podcast

      202 Listeners

      Python Bytes by Michael Kennedy and Brian Okken

      Python Bytes

      215 Listeners

      Data Engineering Podcast by Tobias Macey

      Data Engineering Podcast

      140 Listeners

      Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats by Wes Bos & Scott Tolinski - Full Stack JavaScript Web Developers

      Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

      987 Listeners

      CoRecursive: Coding Stories by Adam Gordon Bell - Software Developer

      CoRecursive: Coding Stories

      189 Listeners

      Kubernetes Podcast from Google by Abdel Sghiouar, Kaslin Fields

      Kubernetes Podcast from Google

      181 Listeners

      AWS Morning Brief by Corey Quinn

      AWS Morning Brief

      77 Listeners

      The Stack Overflow Podcast by The Stack Overflow Podcast

      The Stack Overflow Podcast

      62 Listeners

      Oxide and Friends by Oxide Computer Company

      Oxide and Friends

      47 Listeners