SRE Tools and Technologies: A 2024 Toolkit

NovelVista

Last updated 03/02/2024

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As we proceed with 2024, DevOps, Site Dependability Engineering, and technologies are evolving continuously with the latest updates and features. It also brings new tools that are designed to improve productivity, scalability, and consistency in software development and operations. Site Reliability Engineer certification helps you understand the latest tools and technologies you need to use. 

The business scale can impact the duties and function of a site reliability engineer (SRE) and the tools available to them. Most site reliability engineers employ various technologies that reflect their constantly changing duties because they are typically focused on many jobs and projects at once. 

There will be additional tools in that toolkit since a typical SRE is always automating, optimizing code, updating servers, and keeping an eye on performance dashboards, among other things. Through SRE certification you will understand core practices of site reliability engineers, and make sure to go through it. 

Today, through this blog, we will discover the SRE tools and techniques for SRE that can be effectively used to drive the reliability and stability of software systems.

Highlights:

• SRE is a software engineering method that transforms traditional IT operations by automating tasks, controlling systems, and addressing problems through software.
• Site Dependability Engineering aims to optimize application service availability, latency, speed, scalability, security, and dependability.
• Organizations can significantly improve their operational efficiency and system reliability by adopting SRE methodologies and leveraging the correct set of tools.
• Toolkit of SRE

A Quick Review of SRE

Site reliability engineering, also known as SRE, is a software engineering method for managing IT operations. SRE teams use software to automate operational duties, control systems, and address problems.

Traditionally, operations teams have completed these activities manually. SRE transfers these responsibilities to engineers or operations teams, who utilize software and automation to manage production systems and fix problems.

SRE is a valuable technique when developing scalable and highly dependable software systems. Using code to manage extensive systems makes it easier for system administrators, or sysadmins, to scale and maintain thousands or even hundreds of thousands of machines.

A method of software engineering called Site Dependability Engineering aims to maximize application service availability, latency, speed, scalability, security, and dependability. To accomplish these tasks, SREs employ various technologies, including automation tools, performance analytics and reporting tools, configuration management and versioning tools, on-call management tools, incident management tools, and log aggregation and monitoring tools.  

Site reliability engineering techniques benefit enterprises by guaranteeing their products' most robust and reliable delivery. Maintaining SRE best practices may be accomplished using a set of clearly defined tools implemented at each stage of the production system.

2024 Toolkit for SRE 

SREs need to standardize the tool stacks to support the fast-evolving teams of software engineers in a scalable and efficient manner. Following are the different toolkits that SREs can leverage to perform their operations and tasks effectively.

Containers

• Docker: One container, or Docker container, may hold both the source code for an application and its dependencies. Docker is a well-known open-source containerization technology. Applications may be packaged and run in various contexts with Docker and other containerization technologies, eliminating the need to consider specific system configurations or operating systems. 

Applications become more portable due to this adaptability, as they may operate anywhere without concern about external circumstances. Furthermore, containerization technology facilitates continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), enabling developers to change code continually and launch applications more quickly and effectively.

• Kubernetes: Kubernetes is the open-source container orchestration system used to assist in deploying, scaling, and maintaining containerized applications. Environments can be complex, consisting of multiple platforms or more cloud environments. Kubernetes is used to manage all of these.

While this might seem remarkably familiar to Docker, Kubernetes is not the direct competitor to Docker as Kubernetes can be used in addition to the Docker Platform. However, Docker has an orchestration solution called Docker Swarm. Kubernetes manages many containers simultaneously, helping to evolve applications without interrupting service to users and monitoring the overall health of applications.

• Nomad: Nomad is also a container but is different from Kubernetes. It’s much simpler regarding the number of services it relies on. It doesn’t require or isn’t based on any external services. Businesses known to use or have used Nomad are Roblox, Pandora, etc.

Monitoring and Analytics Tools

• Prometheus: Another open-source program that site reliability engineers utilize is called Prometheus. Because of its wide range of capabilities and support for plugins, it is one of the most widely used tools among SREs and works well with Kubernetes. 

Prometheus gathers metrics about your applications and infrastructure, monitors them, and produces data through dashboards and visualizations.

• Grafana: SREs utilize Grafana, an open-source analytics and monitoring application, to quickly display metrics and data. Grafana may also be set up with several alerts, immediately alerting the right teams or people when problems arise. 

The most crucial metrics may be set into dashboard panels. Grafana supports many data sources, including Prometheus, MySQL, Elasticsearch, SQL, AWS, and others.

• Splunk is a generalized tool that is best for managing big data and deriving actionable insights, boasting full-stack visibility at any scale.
• Dynatrace: It allows SREs to monitor the entire infrastructure behind an application. AI-powered Dynatrace can track your network traffic, host CPU usage, response times, etc.

On-Call Management Tools

• PagerDuty: This tool provides automated incident management, facilitating on-call scheduling. Also, it has more than 700 integrations with services such as JIRA, ServiceNow, AWS, and Salesforce.
• Splunk OnCall: This is called VictorOps; it’s the on-call management tool engineers make for other engineers. It has an edge regarding contextual support, providing the targeted approach for resolution each step of the way.
• Opsgenie: This on-call management tool provides flexibility for various teams and approaches; this dynamic report also supports identifying the key areas for enhancement.

Incident Management Tools

• Issue Triage: This tool will help you configure problems and severity levels to make it easier to know how to prioritize issues and accelerate.
• Runbooks: As per the nature of the problem, this tool presents the runbook, which includes defined steps. Also, this tool can automatically execute workflows if certain conditions are met.
• Data-driven issue analysis: Ideally, this tool will give you all the data needed to understand what happened and analyze steps for avoiding the common issue down the road.

Configuration and Automation Tools

• Terraform: With the help of the well-known open-source infrastructure-as-code tool Terraform, SREs may automate infrastructure for cloud, data center, and service provisioning, compliance, and management. Terraform may enforce the policy as code, manage Kubernetes, and connect with current workflows, among many other use cases.
• Ansible: Ansible takes pride in its simplicity in automation administration. With minimal moving components, this command-line IT automation program prioritizes security and dependability.
• Chef: This tool restructures configuration management tasks across the cloud platforms to spontaneously establish new machines.

Application Performance Monitoring Tools

• Appdynamics: Full Stack observability platform that offers real time data insights for system performance and supports in driving business growth and productivity. AppDynamics concentrates on offering intelligent, business-centric insights into application performance. 

It provides real-time visibility into the user journey, infrastructure, and application code. With the capabilities and potential of Machine Learning, this tool can predict and prevent performance problems.

• New Relic: Simple observability tool that helps development teams analyze, instrument, optimize, and troubleshoot the entire tech stack.

We know that there are different platforms that provide certifications but Novelvista’ SRE certifications will equip you with in-depth knowledge and real time practices. It not only helps you in your work but fortifies you with trends in SRE. 

Conclusion: 

As we enter 2024, these SRE technologies and tools guide you through the complexities of modern Information Technology operations. From real-time observability to predictive analytics, the SRE toolkit 2024 is a testament to the continued evolution of technologies, providing that systems remain dependable, scalable, and ahead of the curve in an ever-changing digital landscape.

The SRE certification cost is also affordable to you so it would be beneficial for you to go for it. Through the certification you will explore the SRE toolkit which is selected based on various factors, including the size of your application, the technology stack, and your specific monitoring needs. Evaluate each tool based on your requirements, considering factors such as real-time monitoring, analytics capabilities, and ease of integration.

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