PracOps

PracOps is a technical philosophy developed by Robert Brockway. The philosophy focuses on the use of free and open source software and aims to keep systems as simple possible while still achieving their operational objectives reliably. PracOps argues that humans should be able to fully understand the functioning of a system.

Change

Change of the sake of change is bad.

There is such a thing as feature completeness.

Monitoring

The purpose of monitoring is to describe the bonunds of the running system, not merely to detect specific failure more. Properly configured a monitor will alert when the behaviour of the system moves outside the pre-defined limits. These limits could be statically or dynamically assigned.

Reliability

Unscheduled outages should be minimised. A concerning trend in IT since 2010 is to acclimate users to outages and failures. Users should expect more of the computer systems they use.

Pracops argues that computers are ultimately tools. Tools that require excessive maintenance to work are not good tools.

People expect their car to start on demand but apparently accept far more failures from general computer systems.

Data from the Uptime Institute clearly shows that outages are getting longer.

This is a draft article and so will not be published on A Voice for Men or appear in random article selections. Wiki4Men is looking for trustworthy editors that can turn draft articles in to featured articles. Information on how to apply is on the Main Page.