Andrisoft Wanguard: Cost-Effective Network Visibility

Andrisoft Wansight and Wanguard are tools for network traffic monitoring, visibility, anomaly detection and response. I’ve used them, and think that they do a good job, for a reasonable price....

Non-Functional Requirements

I’m currently reading and enjoying “The Practice of Cloud System Administration.” It doesn’t go into great depth in any one area, but it covers a range of design patterns and implementation...

Keep an Open Mind

We all know that IT changes rapidly, but we still don’t always accept what that means. Companies and technologies change over time, and good engineers recognise this. Poor engineers cling...

Rewarding Effort vs Results

Sometimes we confuse effort with outcome. We think that hours spent are more important than outcomes achieved. Or we unintentionally create a system where effort is rewarded, rather than outcomes....

APIs Alone Aren't Enough

Yes, we know: Your product has an API. Yawn. Sorry for not getting excited. That’s just table stakes now. What I’m interested in is the pre-written integrations and code you...

Increased MTTR is Good?

In Episode 167 of The Cloudcast - “Bringing Advanced Analytics to DevOps”, Dave Hayes brings up an interesting point about Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR). At about 8:30 in, he...

Using Firewalls for Policy Has Been a Disaster

Almost every SDN vendor today talks about policy, how they make it easy to express and enforce network policies. Cisco ACI, VMware NSX, Nuage Networks, OpenStack Congress, etc. This sounds...

Root Cause Analysis - It's Not Perfect

Automated Root Cause Analysis promises a lot. High-end network monitoring systems promise that they can automatically isolate network problems, and only tell you about the thing that needs fixing. This sounds...

BYOD: Just another money-grab?

BYOD policies sound alluring. No more forced use of a crappy old corporate laptop - “hey look, we’ll let you choose whatever you want!” But I think it is a way to...

In Praise of Support Lifecycles

If you’re just starting out working with ‘Enterprise’ products, you may not have come across Support Lifecycles. It’s important to know what these are, and how it affects you. They...

Shellshock: One Month On

Shellshock was released a little over a month ago, to wide predictions of doom & gloom. But somehow the Internet survived, and we lurch on towards the next crisis. I...

Disappointed With Check Point

I have recently started working with Check Point products again, after a 5-year break. This has given me a different perspective on how they are progressing. It has been disappointing to...