Saturday, May 23, 2015

Separating alert DL from regular team DL



Most IT organizations usually keep it simple by sending all the alerts to everyone. This is still a sustainable model 10's or 20's of  systems.  However with more monitoring s added , the noise increases and the focus , attention and the rigor needed for the same ,usually starts dipping. 

Alert management and distribution is a real pain when done via email way. Hence , in absence of a dedicated DL for alerts there can be a lot of assumptions or unnecessary noise onto who is attending those or is it actually being taken care of.  We also get engaged in a unnecessary back and forth on query and answering mode - rather then paying attention to the real issue in hand.

Typically in any organizations - we just have a few dedicated resources who jumps onto such incidents/issues real fast , and that too -with an honest intention to solve it for the organization. Hence providing a conducive environment for their work is indeed a prime importance. 

Moreover , separating alerts DL from the primary email DL could be a very good practice,  specially when you have other people who are not responsible for attending OR acting on such alerts. Also on the flip side - it can be so very noisy for those members,  who will go on an never ending stride being part of that DL. Because - important emails might get lost when there is are flurry of alerts.  Of-course you can filter those alerts - then why should you be part of that DL(alert) anyway?

Tip:

1. Keep a primary group DL , which is for regular business communications and discussions.
2. Keep separate DL for alerts - and keep ONLY those engineers, who is accountable for triaging day to day alerts or OnCall related issues.

-Deba

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