What are the best strategies for troubleshooting cloud system issues?

The first thing to do in any troubleshooting situation is to listen to the user. - What are the symptoms? - When did it start? - How long has this been happening? - Has it happened before? - What else would you like to tell me? The second thing is to find out the scope of the problem. - Who is it affecting? - Where is the disturbance? - What equipment is involved? Only then would I proceed with the above considerations, because now I have enough information to define the problem. Now I can separate the responsibilities and contact all of the parties involved. We can coordinate our troubleshooting and repair activities to resolve the issues. Lastly, we get back with the user to verify that they are happy with our solutions.

The best strategies for troubleshooting cloud system issues are to: Identify the problem. Gather information about the affected system. Analyze the information to identify the root cause of the problem. Implement a solution to fix the root cause of the problem. Test the solution to make sure that it has resolved the problem.

#What are the best strategies for troubleshooting cloud system issues? To effectively troubleshoot cloud system issues, it's crucial to employ key strategies such as comprehensive architecture understanding, robust monitoring, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) automation, rigorous error code analysis, stringent security compliance, collaborative interdisciplinary efforts, and leveraging cloud provider support and community-sourced technical knowledge.

Best strategy to identify any issue to first acknowledge that there is issue. Once, you accept it you need to identify how you can recreate the issue and check the logs to get full details of the issue. Logs would be great help to fix the issue.

In my experience, the best strategy here is to do the following: 1. Identify when the problem started. This will give you a timeline to start looking at. 2. Identify if this is affecting one or many devices and/or users. Depending on which it is will help you identify the severity and impact. 3. Use that timeline to search for any changes made before the issue occurred. 4. Roll back the change and test. 5. If everything works then the issue has been found and should be resolved. If issue is still persistent then continue to troubleshoot the problem. Make notes of what is changed so you can re-enable anything that was reverted in the troubleshooting. 7. And as always, it was DNSs fault (this one is a joke…. Sort of)

Cloud monitoring tools are essential for managing and optimizing cloud-based infrastructure. These tools provide real-time visibility into the performance, availability, and security of cloud resources. They track key metrics such as CPU usage, memory, network traffic, and application response times. Cloud monitoring tools often offer alerting capabilities, notifying administrators of issues or anomalies.

There are many tools to monitor your Cloud, but its imperative to make sure you monitor the right data. For example, AWS has basic monitoring for EC2s (cloud VMs), which includes CPU, network I/O, and disk I/O at no charge. You can use these to get a basic grasp on your systems in the cloud. You can even save money on your spend using the same data by accessing the AWS Right Sizing Report. But, unless you enable memory monitoring by installing the CloudWatch Agent, your right sizing report will be inaccurate. As a cloud admin, it's important you are able to make accurate recommendations to your application teams, as cost savings will always be a a part of the job. Open source tools like Grafana are great for holistic cloud monitoring.

Monitoring Tools are essential whether 3rd party or native cloud provider. You need to set comprehensive monitoring and alerting systems to detect issues as soon as they occur. Configure alerts for key performance metrics, such as CPU usage, memory usage, network traffic, and error rates. Use performance profiling tools to identify bottlenecks in your applications, such as high CPU usage or slow database queries. Check the status of the cloud provider's services. Most providers have status pages that report ongoing incidents or outages. Perform Resource Scaling to evaluate whether your resources (VM/DB/etc) are appropriately scaled. Insufficient resources can cause performance issues, while over-provisioning cause unnecessary costs.

Whether employing vendor monitoring tools or third-party options, besides overseeing performance, availability, and alerts, it's imperative to monitor compliance with policies established for workloads, whether industry-specific or in accordance with organizational guidelines. Monitoring tools can also serve to optimize costs by automatically scaling resources to meet workload demands.

Here are popular cloud monitoring tools: Amazon CloudWatch (AWS): Monitors AWS resources, providing metrics, logs, and alarms. Google Cloud Operations Suite: Offers monitoring, logging, and diagnostics for Google Cloud resources. Azure Monitor (Microsoft Azure): Provides comprehensive monitoring and analytics for Azure resources. New Relic: Offers application and infrastructure performance monitoring, along with log management. Datadog: Provides cloud infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, and log management. Prometheus: An open-source toolkit for monitoring and alerting, known for reliability and scalability. Zabbix: An open-source solution for monitoring network services, servers, and cloud resources.

I would add those practical tips: Draw a picture - get a birds view understanding of the components and the flows, inputs and outputs. Very often, the cloud comes with more complex environments that deserve visualisation and understanding broader context. Always try to learn while troubleshooting. It is like an investment for your next troubleshooting endeavours. Spend time to create notes that will help you in the future. Read all the logs - the logs are usually the most valuable way how to understand what went wrong. Focus on the details, create some statistics - use grep to find keywords, get the logs to CSV and build pivot table, count the errors, see the patterns, build a timeline. When nothing helps, READ THE LOGS AGAIN!

I generally follow these steps when facing an issue. Identify the Issue: Determine the nature and scope of the problem. Isolate the Cause: Pinpoint the root cause of the issue, whether it's related to cloud services, network, or configurations. Containment: Take immediate steps to mitigate the issue's impact, such as isolating affected resources. Resolution: Implement a fix for the problem. This may involve configuration changes, resource scaling, or software updates. Validation: Verify that the issue has been resolved and the system is functioning correctly. Documentation: Document the issue, the actions taken, and the resolution for future reference

Troubleshooting cloud system issues can be challenging, but with a systematic approach you can effectively identify and resolve problems. Here is my top 2 (due to char limit). Monitor and Alerting: Set up comprehensive monitoring and alerting systems to detect issues as soon as they occur. Use cloud-native monitoring tools or third-party solutions like Solarwinds Configure alerts for key performance metrics, such as CPU usage, memory usage, network traffic, and error rates. Documentation is Paramount to Success: Maintain detailed documentation of your cloud infrastructure, including architecture diagrams, configuration settings, and network layouts. This will help you understand your system better during troubleshooting.

It's never the firewall or the network, except when it really is. I have seen the back end routes change and such while being told nothing was done. Traceroute is your best friend. FW rules seem to be change, routes seem to vary, nothing is fixed. After 40 years in the business, I suspect that stating it this way is the best. run Traceroute before and after each step. Set routes, and proxies as required. then go for the FW rules. By then you may find it is the FW rules. set proxy, rerun traceroute.

Structured cloud troubleshooting is essential. Visualize system components for clarity. Learn during each incident and keep detailed notes for future reference. Logs are treasure troves of information; analyze them meticulously, and create statistics. If all else fails, revisit logs for subtle details. This systematic approach ensures effective cloud issue resolution.

Continuous monitoring and incident response plans enable quick detection and mitigation of security threats, ensuring the overall safety and compliance of cloud systems.

Cloud system troubleshooting also hinges on robust security practices. Over the years, I've learned to prioritize data encryption, IAM, and strict access controls. Configuring firewall rules, logging, auditing, and timely vulnerability scanning are all key. Additionally, data backup and restoration are essential. These practices bolster security, reduce the risk of system issues, and ensure effective troubleshooting when needed.

When seeking troubleshooting help in cloud computing, providing a comprehensive picture is key. Alongside your issue, share context and details. If asked for more information, be thorough. Explaining why certain solutions were ruled out gives clarity on your requirements. In my experience, this approach streamlines troubleshooting and leads to more accurate solutions.

When troubleshooting issues avoid the XY problem. The XY problem is asking about your attempted?solution?rather than your actual?problem. This leads to wasted time and energy, both for you, and for those providing help. Example: Toy train stops working - X You notice a wobbly wheel - Y You ask for help fixing the wheel - Y The train still doesn’t work, because the batteries ran out. When looking for peer to peer support, or reaching out to communities always include information about a broader picture along with any attempted solution. If someone asks for more information, do provide details. If there are other solutions you've already ruled out, share why you've ruled them out. This gives more information about your requirements.

One of the most important things to understand to be successful in any troubleshooting is that everything is based on common fundamentals. Need to learn and understand the basics. Any type of cloud system is just another computer system. If one knows underlying protocols and how components interact there will be a big advantage. Of course the scope of possible problems could be drastically different, but the knowledge in networking, system administration and programming will help tackle almost any problem with methodology that would be granted naturally. And one won’t need to guess or follow any guides. There will be a real understanding of how systems work and it will be a lot easier to find any root cause.

Troubleshooting issues that impact the billing might be the most challenged because you have to know the interdependency of services, for example allocated resources but not in use like unattached storage, reserved ip, etc

Managing cloud system issues effectively requires a combination of proactive strategies and responsive measures. Addressing cloud system issues is an ongoing process, and it's essential to have a combination of preventive measures, a well-defined response plan, and continuous improvement. Cloud management should align with your organization's business goals and technology strategies.

a picture says a thousand words an up-to-date diagram of the whole system or the part of the system troubleshooting. you can link the typical error ticket to each point of the diagram. It really easy to get an idea and locate the region of the error quickly

In the cloud there are many methods to find data, and new ways you'd never think of in the past. With AWS, you can enable VPC flow logs which are stored in an S3 bucket. You can use Amazon Athena to query those logs and find out so much about your traffic, especially during an incident. You can use Athena partition projection and combined with your own SQL (hint: AI assist if needed) queries, find the top 10 source IPs and determine what servers (or users) are exerting extreme load to your systems. If you are running a smaller environment, this is especially useful because you may not have tools like New Relic in place to identify this. Think outside the box in the cloud, and learn the options available for obtaining troubleshooting data.