Posts by Rapid7

4 min IT Ops

For the Love of Code: Why We Use JSHint for Static Code Analysis

As developers, we all strive for clean, readable, and easy to refactor code; but, unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen. No matter how great a developer you are, or what language you’re coding in; problems caused by bugs inevitably spring up like weeds in the grass. These problems are exasperated by poorly organized and poorly written code. Once quality starts to drop, even the cleanest high-quality code in your project begins to be affected, until you’re left with a jumbled mess of (and ha

3 min IT Ops

JSON Formatting of Windows Events: It's Hot!

It seems like everyone in DevOps has been talking about JSON recently – JSON is hot! Logentries has written a few posts covering this topic, coveringWhat is JSON [/2014/11/what-is-json-an-introductory-guide/], Common Problems Solved with JSON [/2014/09/3-common-problems-solved-with-json/], and our Exporting as JSON [/2014/07/logs-to-metrics-to-json-to-geckoboard/]. However we thought it would be beneficial to dive into some more specific applications. We already wrote about a few, namely JSON a

4 min IT Ops

Unlimited Logging: A New Chapter in Log Management

It’s no secret that log data is quickly becoming one of the most valuable sources of information within organizations. There are open source, on-premise, and cloud-based solutions to help you glean value from your logs in many different ways. Largely, organizations use logs for debugging during development, for monitoring and troubleshooting production systems, for security audit trails and forensics, and (more and more) for different business use cases that transcend product management and mar

3 min IT Ops

The Role of Logging in the Internet of Things

Let’s explore the importance of logging from IoT devices… The IoT is defined as the interconnection of uniquely identifiable embedded computing devices within an existing internet infrastructure [1]. In plain English IoT is expected to enable the advanced connectivity of devices and systems, which would involve machine-to-machine communications (M2M). The IoT [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things] is still in its early stages but some analysts predict that the IoT will boost the glob

4 min IT Ops

What Is JSON? An Introductory Guide

Some days it’s hard to remember if Moore’s law applies to increasing computer power or the number of technologies and breadth of terminology impacting our daily work. JSON, short for JavaScript Object Notation, continues to gain momentum in our increasingly connected world. Reading this primer will give you a baseline understanding so you can start having intelligent conversations about the pros and cons of using JSON [/2014/10/how-to-format-nginx-and-django-logs-using-kvps/] with your team.

3 min IT Ops

Logging Activity in a Smart Home

The Smart Home concept is a subset of the Internet of Things(IoT). The core idea is to connect “things” (digital devices) to each other to facilitate communication, feedback, and alerting. In essence connecting the physical world with the digital world. We are installing new sensors and actuators into everyday devices that is leading to new IoT and Smart Home services by integrating existing solutions and technologies. The IoT network is growing at an unbelievable pace. From just 2 billion obje

3 min IT Ops

Shared Services: The Unicorn Every DevOps is Looking For

In my hunt for the mysterious DevOps practice, I’ve been let down. DevOps are hard to find. When you find them, they do not exactly do what you think they should do. Some DevOps teams only execute on automation for dev; while others are operations folks with a new name; and still others are internal consultants helping operations and developers (but not actually doing the work). In my DevOps scavenger hunt I have identified a new type of creature; shared services (aka the unicorn) What I have

4 min IT Ops

4 Alerts You Need In Case System Events Stop Occurring

“Silence is golden” This is not always true, especially when something you were expecting to happen* doesn’t* happen. However, this is true when you have a system or a service you are trying to maintain and things stop happening or go quiet. We recently developed a new service — Inactivity Alerting [https://logentries.com/product/inactivity-alerting/] —  to help you with this common challenge and, as you might expect, it fires alerts when there is noted inactivity around a specific log or eve

4 min IT Ops

How to Format Nginx and Django Logs Using KVPs

Interested in learning a couple insider tips to gain more value from your logs using additional structure? Specifically, we will show how to easily introduce key-value pair (KVP) format on Nginx and Django logs. Of course, the approach is not restricted to those two types of logs, and can be applied to numerous applications. Previously, our Head of Product, Marc Concannon explained how logging information in JSON format [/2014/09/3-common-problems-solved-with-json/]makes it possible to leverag

3 min IT Ops

Logs: The Most Fine-grained Data Source

As co-founder of Logentries I am often asked – “Why Logs?”  And I have to admit, upon first impression, ‘log management [https://logentries.com/doc/log-management/] and analytics’ does not seem like the sexiest space 🙂 However at Logentries [http://logentries.com]we are here to redefine that space, to provide a solution to access, manage and understand your log data that is easy to use, cost effective and intelligent (i.e. it does the hard work so you don’t have to).  But that being said it sti

2 min IT Ops

How to Master the Installation of the Windows Agent

Over the past month we have been updating the LogentriesWindows Agent [https://logentries.com/doc/windows-agent/] to make it more powerful for our growing customers needs. One particular area we felt needed updating was the Command Line capabilities of the Windows Agent [https://logentries.com/doc/windows-agent/]. Logentries is now proud to announce that you now have even more ways to install our Windows Agent to your environment. [/content/images/le-img/2014/10/Windows-Agent-Mastering-the-In

5 min IT Ops

In the Log Management World: Are you a Fox or Hedgehog?

I’ve recently been reading Nate Silver’s book, “The Signal and the Noise.” In the book, Silver looks at a number of areas where predictions have been made and considers how successful they have been, as well as the reasons why they have been accurate (or not). I couldn’t help but draw the similarities how most companies use log management [https://www.rapid7.com/fundamentals/what-is-log-management/] tools today. Silver’s particular interests are political forecasting (see www.fivethirtyeight

3 min IT Ops

Heroku Buttons Rock!

As one of Heroku’s beta users I had the chance to check out the new Heroku button gallery [https://buttons.heroku.com/] last week. I must say I was very pleasantly surprised. Over the past few years, it’s fair to say Heroku have nailed their PAAS offering. They are one of the few PAAS providers to truly succeed in providing developers both an easy to deploy platform, and a full ecosystem of add ons. This allows you as a developer to get on with what you do best. Yes, you can actually spend you

3 min IT Ops

Logging from PHP Web Frameworks like Laravel

So what is Laravel [http://laravel.com/]? Laravel is a relatively new MVC web framework for PHP that was released in 2012. It’s also the most popular PHP project on Github [https://github.com/laravel/laravel] at the time of this post. Like many web frameworks, Laravel boasts an easy learning-curve to get an app up and running. This was certainly the case when I used it. While this post is focusing on logging in Laravel, its applicable to other php web frameworks, like Symfony2 [http://symfony.c

5 min IT Ops

Cloud Platforms vs. On-Prem - A Guide for the Rest of Us

Working for Cloud based businesses for the greater part of a decade now, one question invariably comes up: “Why should I move my data to the cloud?” There are always a few objections that come up as well. Following-up on a previous blog post where we discussed the business benefits of cloud computing [/2014/09/7-benefits-of-cloud-based-computing-for-non-technical-techies/], this will be a discussion on the most common objections and how to have a conversation around cloud and on-premise envir