Section Choosing: systems
Selections for infrastructure situations
Class first, then criteria, then names. Seven situations rather than one ranking.
Teams applying this principle can also compare practical guidance on employee time tracking app, keeping time and activity records separate from the judgement they are meant to inform.
Seven situations rather than one ranking. Each names the class of problem first, then the criteria that decide the outcome, and only then any products, because a product chosen before the class is a coin toss with a purchase order attached.
Three rules apply to every selection on this site. There are no scores of our own, because a score implies a measurement we have not made. There is no claim to have tested anything we have not tested. And every option carries a line describing what it costs you, including the ones we think are good.
Prices are the least stable fact in this market. Where a figure appears anywhere on this site it carries the date it was read and the source it came from; where it does not appear, that is deliberate.
Published
- 01
Which class does your problem belong to
Infrastructure monitoring is six markets, and feature comparisons between two tools frequently compare things that are not alternatives.
Read - 02
A team of five with no dedicated on-call
The binding constraint is a few unspent hours a week, and every criterion here follows from that number rather than from features.
Read - 03
When the telemetry bill grows faster than the traffic
It is almost never growth. Establish whether the curve turned at a deployment or at a traffic increase, because the answers differ completely.
Read
Everything in this section
- 7 min readWhich class does your problem belong to
- 7 min readA team of five with no dedicated on-call
- 6 min readWhen the telemetry bill grows faster than the traffic
- 6 min readOne application on one server
- 6 min readKubernetes without a platform team
- 6 min readWhen the data has to stay in-house
- 6 min readA service whose users notice before the graphs do
Further context
For a primary, standards or institutional reference, see the CIS Critical Security Controls.
Start from the class of problem, not the list of tools
Every selection here names the situation first and the criteria second. Product names come last, and each one carries the line describing what it costs you.