April 27 Derek

On writing

Posted in Development |  Comments

Ernest Hemingway via Letters of Note

I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.

Sounds a lot like writing code too, huh?

April 25 Andre

Polishing Charts

Posted in Updates |  Comments

Charts got some updates today:

• More colors available: previously, charts had just six colors and nine shades of gray available for plotting metrics. The new color scheme uses HTML standard colors, and makes it easier to follow lines on busy charts.
• Timeframe selection on dashboards: dashboard charts now default to a 5-hour timeframe. You can easily zoom out all charts simultaneously by clicking the new links at the top. This lets you quickly broaden your view to see what’s going on, without having to navigate to a bunch of charts individually.
• No more iFrames on dashboards: by encapsulating the chart code better, we were able to get rid of iFrames on dashboards. This makes the dashboard page much lighter on memory (a typical dashboard might be 50MB lighter), and also fixes some quirky behavior when you’re resizing a chart.
• Nice looking URLS: chart URLs are prettier and easier to copy-paste—there are no more encoded characters in the URL.

April 17 Andre

Scout Alerts in Campfire via Hubot

Posted in Examples, Updates |  Comments

Want to get Scout alerts piped into your Campfire room? You can, thanks to Scout user Gavin Stark’s Hubot script for Scout. Gavin describes the advantages for his team at Real Digital Media:

Our support staff can now see the alerts from Scout as a team. We combine this with other monitoring services that monitor ping-ability and web response speeds.

Getting Scout alerts in Campfire means we can discuss them inline and respond quickly. We’ve found the immediacy of Campfire to be an improvement over email.

Want to get your Scout alerts in Campfire? You’ll need a Hubot.

Need to set up a Hubot?

Hubot is a program that listens in on your chat room. He responds to commands and can provide notifications. Your Hubot needs to run someplace. Most people set him up on Heroku, since it’s A) really simple; B) free!

1. follow these instructions to deploy Hubot to Heroku.
2. once your Hubot has joined your Campfire room and responds to commands (try: hubot help), continue below to configure Scout to talk to your Hubot.

Already Got a Friendly Hubot?

Two easy steps:

1. add the Hubot Script for Scout into your Hubot’s /scripts directory.
2. in your Scout account, click on “Notifications,” then set the webhooks URL to http://YOUR_HUBOT_URL/hubot/scoutapp/CAMPFIRE_ROOM_NUMBER

That’s it! Try creating a Scout trigger that fires immediately to test it out.

Thanks again to Scout user Gavin Stark for writing the Hubot script, and to Hubot maintainer Tom Bell for the quick merge.

Related

• Scout webhook help

April 09 Andre

Say Hello to JavaScript Charts

Posted in Features, Updates |  Comments

JavaScript charts are here, they look great, and they work on your iPad!

Scout’s basic chart functionality has remained the same, with a few enhancements:

1. Most importantly, the charts no longer require Flash. This means you can view the charts on your iPad or modern Flash-free browser.
2. Charts now show values in a tooltip as you mouse over them (the image above shows an example). This solves a long-standing problem with the old charts, where the legend became unreadable with many metrics.
3. The charts feel snappier!

JavaScript charts have been a popular request on the Scout Uservoice page, and we’re pleased to release them. As always, any feedback, let us know.

A Note on dashboards with the new tooltip: in some cases the tooltip can overflow from the smallest charts on dashboards. If you encounter this issue, just enlarge your dashboard chart a bit to make room for the tooltip.

March 21 Andre

Webhooks

Posted in Features |  Comments

In addition to email and SMS, Scout now sports a flexible new alerting option: webhooks. When a trigger generates an alert, Scout can post the alert details to a URL of your choice.

Read more...

March 20 Andre

An update to the "Simple Process Check" Plugin

Posted in Plugins |  Comments

The Simple Process Check plugin takes a comma-delimited list of process names, and alerts you if any of the named processes stop running. It’s an easy way to keep tabs on the essential processes on your server.

What’s New: Track Multiple Processes with Different Arguments

You can also check that a process exists with a certain substring included in its arguments. For example, to check for two instances of node (one with “emailer” in its args, and one with “eventLogger” in its args), set this in process_names: node/emailer,node/eventLogger.

You can mix and match pure process_names and process_name/args.

Here’s the link to the Simple Process Check plugin again.

March 09 Derek

One Hundred Dollars

Posted in Development, Business |  Comments

Recently I’ve been calling a couple of customers per-week to chat about their Scout experience. One of the questions I’ve been asking comes out of left field: ”What would you pay another $100/mo for?” I’ll ask the question first to see if they have any suggestions, then run a small selection of ideas by them.

Besides asking my future wife to marry me, it’s the best question I’ve asked in years.

Read more...

February 22 Andre

Low Value Triggers are Here

Comments

Support for triggers on low values is a popular request. It’s here! You can now be alerted when any metric drops below a threshold you specify.

To use low value triggers, create a peak trigger as you would normally, and click on “use low values.” Like upper-peak triggers, you can specify one level for email alerts and another level for SMS alerts (assuming your plan supports SMS).

A side note: the Scout uservoice forum is a great place to make feature suggestions – it’s the easiest way for us to gauge when the demand for a feature reaches a tipping point.

January 18 Derek

Real Time Infographic

Posted in Updates |  Comments

It’s been a little over a week since we rolled out real-time monitoring. Some people think it’s pretty cool.

To commemorate one week of real time, our art department put together a basic infographic on its usage. You’re spending more time watching lines move on the screen than YouTube Nyan Cat videos. We’re damn proud of that.

Learn more about real time server monitoring with Scout.

January 09 Andre

Announcing Scout Real Time

Posted in Features |  Comments

Deploying a new feature? Load testing? Debugging a performance issue? Now you can get Scout metrics in real time for immediate feedback.

Real time in Action

(2 min 28 sec—we know your time is valuable).

Using Real Time

Choose the metrics you want to view in real time using the standard charts interface. Then, click the Real Time button:

The real time charts look a bit different from the standard Scout charts. Each metric is displayed separately:

Note that the real time session doesn’t start immediately. That’s because Scout needs to launch a separate process on your server(s) for the duration of the real time session. It can take up to a minute for all your servers to check in and get the message that real time needs to be started.

It’s Like Your Servers are There in the Room

If Scout is a periodic status report from your servers, real time is like a live, in-person meeting. You and your servers face-to-face.

Of course, you don’t want to be in meetings 24/7. Scout real time is the same way – it’s designed for short periods to address a specific issue. By default, real time sessions run for 30 minutes, and you can extend the sessions for longer if needed.

Try Real Time

For a limited time, real time is available FREE on ALL Scout accounts. You do need the latest Scout agent to try it. As long as your Scout gem is version 5.5.0+, real time will automatically be available on your charts.

Get Started!

1. Update your Scout gem: [sudo] gem install scout
2. click the Real Time button on any Scout chart