WP-CLI is a super useful tool, which I use on a daily basis, and I wish more people knew about.  Gladly, there is now “What Is WP-CLI? A Beginner’s Guide“, which explains what it is, how to install it, how to use it, and where to go from there.
Category: Sysadmin
System administration is a special are of IT. It also has a special place in my heart. It is an interesting mixture of all the other disciplines, both common across the whole industry, and at the same time unique for each person, company, and geographical location. When I have something to say or share about system administration, I use this category.
Building the Right Alerting System
Here’s something I wanted to get into for a while now, but haven’t had the time yet – switching the monitoring / alerting system from server-oriented to business-oriented. Â The gist of the story is:
If it’s not actionable and business critical, then it shouldn’t ring.
The article has some statistics and summaries as well. Â The reasoning behind the switch is obvious, but it’s good to have it formulated:
After a few months, I can tell reducing our alerting rate should have been a top priority before things got out of hands, for a few reasons.
- Constant alerts prevented the team to focus on what was important. Being interrupted even for things that can wait for a few hours lowers our productivity when we work on things that can’t wait.
- Being awaken every night, several times a night exhausts a team and make people less productive at day, and more prone to do errors.
- Too many off hours interventions cost the company a lot of money that could be invested in hardening the infrastructure or hiring someone else instead.
Stack Overflow: Helping One Million Developers Exit Vim
OK, this one is socially funny and statistically cool – Stack Overflow question on how to exit Vim editor was viewed over a million times in the last few years. Â Now, there’s a breakdown of all sorts of statistics about who gets stuck in Vim the most. Â It’s pretty amazing the kind of questions and answers one can ponder at when having access to a lot of statistical data.
:wq
Using the Strict-Transport-Security header
Julia Evans has an excellent write-up on “Using the Strict-Transport-Security header” – what it is, why you’d want to use it, and what are some of the consequences of using one.
As always with her blog posts, this one is very focused on one particular subject, easy to read, and explains things simply, so that the reader’s technical level is always irrelevant (OK, OK, you do need a basic understanding of how HTTP works, but not more than that).
Netsim – a network simulator game for teaching
Netsim is a simulator game intended to teach you the basics of how computer networks function, with an emphasis on security. You will learn how to perform attacks that real hackers use, and see how they work in our simulator!
Netsim is completely free to play.