[nlg]

I agree in general with the responses encouraging better usage of managed platforms. I've run a SaaS app for a couple of years using a combination of AWS Elasticbeanstalk (Flask and Django) and AWS Lambda. Server resource related downtime has been minimal and recovery is quick/automated. Even hosting on Lambda you can run into issues without layers of redundancy (Lambda may be fine but a Route 53 outage would prevent you from hitting that endpoint if you're using that for DNS).

Before thinking about handing over management of the deployment, I would encourage you to think about what the root cause of the outage is and whether something in the app will create that situation again. I invested in setting up DataDog monitoring for all hosts with alerts on key resource metrics that were causing issues (CPU was biggest issue for me).

The other thing that's worked well for me is just keeping things simple. As a solo founder, time spent with customers is more valuable than time spent on infrastructure (assuming all is running well). It's a little dated, but I still think this is a good path to follow as you're building your customer base. A simple stack will let you spend more time learning how your product can help your customers best.

http://highscalability.com/blog/2016/1/11/a-beginners-guide-...

[kevinyun]

We are considering Datadog, and nothing else seems to compare to them, but they seem extremely expensive. As a small startup/solo founder, did your implementation justify costs?

[byteshock]

Datadog is the best all around tool with APM and log monitoring built in. I highly recommend it as it will be substantially cheaper than paying for separate monitoring, apm, logs, etc. The support is also a lot more receptive towards small business owners unlike other platforms such as New Relic.

Also if you send custom stats to datadog such as login activity, you can use their Anomaly detection to find suspicious behavior.

Disclaimer: we use datadog at my company and have tried all the other popular options. Hands down datadog is the most feature rich and user friendly.

[nlg]

Yes, it's been an incredibly valuable tool for me. I get the most out of the host monitoring and the logging / alerting. The APM is nice, but I'm not using it nearly as much as the other pieces.

Just getting logging centralized alone has saved me tons of time, which is in turn more time spent on the product. I've been able to use the log parsing to setup metrics that tell me when an outside integration is acting up and isolate which paths. Take a day to really learn how their logs work and you'll be able to generate metrics / advanced event alerting in no time.

I was hesitant to pay the premium, but the peace of mind has been worth it. You can piece the same thing together with open source tooling. But then you've got another thing to manage.

[heliodor]

Plenty of people are happy using the industry-standard open-source tools:

- metrics system (Prometheus, InfluxDB, Graphite, etc.)

- dashboards (Grafana)

- alerts (both the metrics system and Grafana can handle this)

If you're not a big-data company, you can self-host instances of these products reliably.

Disclosure: My startup, https://HostedMetrics.com, provides turnkey hosted versions of these software packages.

I'd be happy to explain the options that are out there and provide any advice you need. Get in touch: contact info is in my profile.

[byteshock]

Your product doesn’t even come close to what datadog offers....

[heliodor]

Datadog has ~9000 customers. I imagine the respective open-source tools have many more customers than that, which says something about the perceived value of the two approaches. Also, Datadog wraps many tools into one whereas the open-source solutions have singular purposes. It's an apples to oranges comparison.

[gamache]

$15 per server per month isn't that extreme. I've used Datadog in production for 3+ years (starting from a headcount of 10) and can honestly say they've been worth every penny. Observability is irreplacable.