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Show HN: Monitoror – Unified monitoring wallboard

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Re: Show HN: Monitoror – Unified monitoring wallboard

#71

Post by jaywalk »

jedberg wrote: post #51
sunbear-lover wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic a speedometer is an anti pattern and your car should just send up an alert when you're speeding... since when is getting accurate real-time information a bad thing?

That’s... actually true. It doesn’t matter how fast you’re going unless you’re speeding. And it distracts you by making you look down. The only reason we don’t have that yet is because the car doesn’t know the speed limit everywhere all the time.

I have that in my 2020 Ford, and you can tune the alert threshold from 0-5mph over the limit. I wouldn't even consider turning it on unless I could set it to at least 10mph, however.

The vehicle has a camera that looks out for speed limit signs, and then updates a little icon on the instrument cluster with the current speed limit. It works very well.

Re: Show HN: Monitoror – Unified monitoring wallboard

#72

Post by tyrust »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #55
wjossey wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly disagree. Understanding your metrics is a key part of so many roles, from devops, to product teams, to marketers... Yes, you should be automating alerts whenever possible. Yes, you should be putting up key metrics in a visible place so everyone can see how the product is performing. I can’t tell you how many times I caught an issue because I knew our metrics backwards and forwards, but it didn’t trip an aler…

An automated email is ok but seeing visually a graph flat line or a monitor turn red is much more likely to get noticed.

If you ignore alerting then it's likely that your alerts are too noisy. See "alert fatigue".

Re: Show HN: Monitoror – Unified monitoring wallboard

#73

Post by C1sc0cat »

sparrish wrote: post #64
sirtoffski wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll chime in here to say we use both at work. In a NOC at a medium-sized ISP, we are getting hammered with alerts 24/7. Some are not urgent, while others need to be actioned much faster - I mean 100G transit link down is no good. We’d receive an automatic email about a large circuit going down, we’d also receive a ticket about it; sometimes people dont look at the tickets closely enough, other times people get distr…

If you're getting alerts for non-actionable events, you need to do a better job of tuning your monitors and alerts. Alerts shouldn't be sent about anything that doesn't require an action.

Yeh any one from Google here if you like to allow us to fine tune the alerts from GSC - I came in today and found 87 non useful alerts in my inbox.

I will have a look at the tool and have a play - I assume you can have multiple pages :-)

Would be cool to monitor the looks at GA " 1 2 3 4 5 …. Many" sites I have an interest in

Re: Show HN: Monitoror – Unified monitoring wallboard

#74

Post by scoutt »

tilolebo wrote: post #52
scoutt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is intended to be stared at it 8 hours-straight. I thinks it's more like a clock: you look at it several times a day, and not only when you hear an alarm.

Clocks are an anti pattern... Why would you want to have the time displayed permanently? It's such a distraction for developers. Just set automated alerts for lunch and end of day and that's it.

Well, I have a clock in the wall in front of me that permanently displays the time. I check the time several times a day, for example to check how much time left I have to do something before lunch or going home, or a having a meeting.

I don't know why are we discussing the practical uses of a clock. I can't imagine a life where one is allowed to look at a clock only when an alarm or alert is triggered.

Re: Show HN: Monitoror – Unified monitoring wallboard

#75

Post by SergeAx »

_jal wrote: post #54
SergeAx wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why do you need an app where webpage is more than enough?

Because it cost like $10 and 5 minutes, could be set up by non-web-plumbers, and was pretty out of the box.

I really don't understand, is sounds too ignorant and almost arrogant.

Web browser doesn't need to be set up, it is already included with iPad (or any Android device, or any laptop or desktop, or your smart TV, smart fridge or smart watch).

You need to configure your app during first launch pointing it to your data source, and maybe entering login and password. It is exactly the same amount of hussle compared to opening web site and make it default homepage of your browser.

I don't even want to talk about money, it's totally irrelevant, $10 or $0.

Re: Show HN: Monitoror – Unified monitoring wallboard

#76

Post by wpietri »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #63
wpietri wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. Alerts serve a different purpose. One of the most important things a team needs over the long haul is a feel for their system. Many people refer to this as mechanical sympathy. And the way you develop that is long-term exposure to rich data. Alerts are the red and yellow lights on your dashboard. But you get mechanical sympathy by listening to the sound of the engine, feel of the road, and the smell of th…

> you have to have the right information shown in the right ways for people to develop a correlative, intuitive understanding of what they've built Lots of things have to be right for this to work, unfortunately, and company dashboards I've seen so far tend to be nowhere near it. For instance, the dashboard refreshed $PERIOD only makes sense if you're showing data that updates $PERIOD, and if you can respond to chang…

Agreed! I find dashboards at most companies disappointing. And often for the same reason I find other stuff on their walls disappointing: it's frequently irrelevant or actively unhelpful to the work actually being performed.

For me, good dashboards are like good checklists: they should be living entities owned by the team in question and regularly updated to address active concerns. And they don't even have to be complex. Back before CI was in fashion, I drove giant changes in a team's behavior just by having a single LED indicator (the now-departed Ambient Orb) show the state of the current build. Previously, the build would stay broken for weeks at a time, only converging to green around the time of release. Nobody liked that, but they were used to it, so they'd just work around it. But once it was visible and discussed, they eventually got so the build was green almost all the time. It was less painful and saved a bunch of time.

I would absolutely love to try out a set of ambient audio indicators. I suspect I'd want to try it along with a visual dashboard, because the moment I hear something anomalous, I'm going to want to look up and see the recent history, so I can correlate the audio with what it represents and what else is going on.

Re: Show HN: Monitoror – Unified monitoring wallboard

#77

Post by SergeAx »

ampdepolymerase wrote: post #68
iamben wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside: this is one of the biggest lessons of my adult life. Just because I could make something doesn't mean I should make something. Learning to value your time is a very underdeveloped skill.

But...but.. something.. something Stallman...vendor lock-in...closed-platforms bad...something.

If it is a sarcasm, then please mind that original comment author got really humped by this app's vendor when it stopped working. Maybe Stallman got something right after all?

Re: Show HN: Monitoror – Unified monitoring wallboard

#78

Post by reaperducer »

tyrust wrote: post #70
reaperducer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how many times was an issue missed because you weren't in the office, or because you were looking at your own screen and not dashboards at the moment? That's not a problem with dashboards. That's a problem with training and staffing people. because you can't scalably fix problems with SSH. The number of businesses that need to worry about scalability is vanishingly small compared to the number of businesses that d…

>That's not a problem with dashboards. That's a problem with training and staffing people. Training and staffing people to look at dashboards? I've never heard of this and it sounds awful.

"Hey, Mike. On your way to the Keurig, remember to glance at the status panel on the wall and let us know if something doesn't look right, OK?"

Brutal.

Re: Show HN: Monitoror – Unified monitoring wallboard

#79

Post by reaperducer »

SergeAx wrote: post #75
_jal wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it cost like $10 and 5 minutes, could be set up by non-web-plumbers, and was pretty out of the box.

I really don't understand, is sounds too ignorant and almost arrogant. Web browser doesn't need to be set up, it is already included with iPad (or any Android device, or any laptop or desktop, or your smart TV, smart fridge or smart watch). You need to configure your app during first launch pointing it to your data source, and maybe entering login and password. It is exactly the same amount of hussle compared to open…

The hard/technical part isn't launching the browser. It's about building a continuously updating status page for that browser to display.

Re: Show HN: Monitoror – Unified monitoring wallboard

#80

Post by stiray »

SergeAx wrote: post #50
reaperducer wrote: post #48

Panic used to have an iOS app that did this. It was called Status Board, and was magnificent. You could put it on an old iPad on an easel on your desk and watch everything from RSS feeds to ping statistics. In an office setting, you'd hook the 'Pad up to a cheap flat screen TV so everyone could see. Sadly, Panic discontinued it when it decided to go after the video game market.

But why do you need an app where webpage is more than enough?

One more thing, if I want a webpage, I will just write plugin for this: https://github.com/netdata/netdata

It is meant as system monitor but it can chew up preatty much anything. And it is fast and lean. Really fast.

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