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…and a good compass

It’s a beautiful day, there’s a clear blue sky and you take your boat out to the sea.

After a few hours of a pleasant trip, your long-range weather radar shows a storm approaching. You check your fuel gauge, and find there’s not enough fuel left to return home using your engines. Luckily, using the wind direction and your current speed, you can rapidly define a new trajectory to avoid the storm and continue your peaceful journey.  Having the right information protects you from disaster, or embarrassment.

In IT, the same principles apply. Your logs and monitoring systems are like your radar and instruments, keeping you informed of past and current conditions, and helping you make good decisions in future.

Having a lack of, or incomplete, logs is like sailing without a compass, radar, a fuel gauge or a tachometer. In some cases, it can be as bad as sailing at night without instruments at all.

Would you take your family on a trip in such conditions? Or even with a radar that doesn’t give you the distance between you and the objects it sees? When talking about logs, details matters too.