In the beginning, there was the Log – or to be a bit more precise, there were application logs. At least that's how it was in the early days of application development, when raw log data itself was more often than not the point where troubleshooting began.

Logs are valuable. Logs generated by a major backend resource that provides clients with access to crucial data are more than just valuable; knowing where they are and being able to manage and understand the information that they contain can mean the difference between smooth, secure operation and degraded performance or even catastrophic failure for your application.

How have monitoring tools evolved over the years? That’s a big question, and one that few people are capable of answering based on personal experience. Monitoring software has been around in one form or another since the early years of computing, and few people who are active in the profession today were working then.

Yes, it is; above all else, DevOps is a strategy. More accurately, it is a strategic framework for transforming both development and operations into something new and not yet entirely defined.