PagerDuty

Commentaires: We immediately handled the overflow of noise from Nagios, AppDynamics, Dotcom-Monitor, SCOM(from our dc provider) and were able to drop a cellular device using the centralized phone contact with Pager-Duty. We also were able to put our on-call schedule into PagerDuty to realize immediately who was on-call for what product, in what region. There was a very immediate value add realized from even just trialing PagerDuty.

Avantages: I tried a competitor's product which was a free notification manager up to 11 people. It took me 3 days to get anywhere with a basic task of integrating 3 of our noisiest alerts. Then I tried the PagerDuty trial and got 2 of our noisiest alerts built out in 1 day. I added 3 more over the next 2 days to go well over the targeted mark. Coworkers were excited to help put time and effort into the system as opposed to the free tool which I couldn't seem to get any traction with. The alerts were immediately available, they were easy to get posting to my cell phone, and adding additional users was a cinch. The tool unfolds and becomes more useful the more time you put into it where some tools you struggle to get right and then you're afraid to make changes.

Inconvénients: The UI is a bit quirky in the scheduler which is a pretty important view if you have a rotating on-call shift you're trying to tie down. There was a lot of "can't delete before you delete elsewhere" scenarios where there could have been a "will also delete these elsewhere, are you sure?" scenarios. What you gain in ease of use and stability in the mobile platform you lose in overall functionality, it is simple almost to a fault and while it seems silly there's no skinning of the mobile app to better suit your personality in a hyper-customized world. I'll know shortly if they're willing to go longer but they seem to be sticklers for the exact trial length + only a little. Corporations interested in putting in a full month long or longer trial that may need that amount of time to show value, create a SOW, and have a PO issued may be stuck in limbo for a few weeks.

Commentaires: I started trialling PagerDuty and other alert aggregation services after accidentally sending myself 10,000 emails. One thing PagerDuty does and does well, is cut through the noise, and helps you focus on the actionable issues. With integration with almost every alerting tool out there, including basic email - integrating a PagerDuty alert into your application or service is far too easy. The pricing is reasonable, and the phone and SMS alerting options work well, even in New Zealand. The PagerDuty app itself makes being on call so much easier, with simple acknowledgement and resolution actions, next to escalation and incident collaboration features. Having user controlled customisation, you can setup the alerting to suit your connectivity and support your sleep. After 6 years on call for a critical NZ wide system, I can say PagerDuty is refreshing change to the game. Don't hate the pager...

Avantages: Simple setup and easy first alert.
Comprehensive incident management, reporting and analytics to focus on what matters.
Highly configurable alerting that is controllable by the recipient themselves.
Easy escalation, resolution and communication features in mobile application and via the web.
Well supported SMS and Phone alerting and incident management - Internationally
Quick and easy support for the product - from a great PagerDuty team.
Less noise, more actionable alerts with comprehensive de-duplication and alert filtering options.

Inconvénients: PagerDuty is unforgiving of poorly written interfaces generating errors and despite ignoring ones' phone while in meetings, the alert will get to you, no matter what you are doing!
While I love the 'PagerDuty' alerting and am amused by the 'Engineer Laughing' alert sound - having more options for custom, per incident, alert notification sounds in the Mobile app would be great.