Tales from the Ops Side
7 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 3 years ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsTales From the Ops Side is a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at the running of an Internet Ops company. Hosted by Hany Fahim – owner of Toronto-based stack.io – Tales From The Ops Side is a must-listen for anyone working in or interested in Internet technology. Even if you’re not part of the Internet tech world, you’ll find this show informative and entertaining! Hany explores such things as the interconnectedness between the moon, tides, and time, handling pressured deadlines, assisting nations dealing with oppressive government policies, and what it takes to launch and run a tech startup. As a storyteller, Hany is a natural, weaving in little details that add depth and colour to his narratives. He uses analogies to make his tech stories truly accessible to all. And Hany’s curiosity takes listeners on some wild and eclectic journeys, with extensive exploration of both causes and solutions! You’ll be surprised at what you discover and learn!
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Episodes
E06 - Unpacking an Anomaly
February 24, 2021 13:00 - 25 minutes - 17.5 MBIt all started as a simple error message from a piece of software that had run seamlessly thousands of times over the past two years. And yet, once a week in late 2016, this error message would rear its ugly head. At first, it was thought to be a user error. But after some testing, it was clear that we were dealing with a software bug. Thus began a month-long hunt for this elusive bug, becoming as much a personal vendetta as a solution to an intractable problem. Software bugs are a fact o...
E05 - A Windy Day
February 10, 2021 08:00 - 20 minutes - 13.9 MBMost companies don’t discover they have been hacked until months later. But imagine catching a hacker red-handed? Your course of action would be very different. Instead of dealing with the aftermath, your focus would be on urgently identifying the source and then blocking the hack. This is exactly what stack.io CEO and Founder Hany Fahim did when dealing with his first hack, back when he was a young Systems Administrator. Yes, this episode tells a tale from some years ago. So long ago...
E04 - Dr Strangecron or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the lastcomm
January 27, 2021 09:00 - 17 minutes - 12.2 MBstack.io CEO and show host Hany Fahim puts on his Sherlock Holmes hat in this episode of Tales from the Ops Side. He's investigating a missing file of sensitive data, while his client and their partner point fingers at each other over fault. This client had an agreement to provide sensitive data on a nightly basis to a partner. This was automated, the process called a cronjob. Hany's lunch was interrupted in late 2017 when an urgent request came in from this client. The problem: One ni...
E03 - How Brazil Kept Us Up At Night
January 13, 2021 11:00 - 18 minutes - 12.4 MBHost Hany Fahim tells an intriguing tale of the global ripple effects of a political event and the phenomenal power of social media. Hany was - somewhat successfully – at home assembling a chair one evening in 2015. Suddenly, he received news of a huge spike in traffic. Normally, this would point to a number of things, such as a marketing event or even an attack—but nothing seemed to add up. Hunting for answers, Hany traced the users’ IP addresses. Interestingly, they all seemed to lead ...
E00 - Welcome to Tales from the Ops Side
December 14, 2020 20:00 - 34 minutes - 23.7 MBWelcome to Tales From the Ops Side, a new podcast show exploring Internet Ops. Tales From the Ops Side is produced by stack.io and narrated by stack.io’s founder, Hany Fahim. The show is an exploration of Hany’s adventures in running stack.io. Hany delves into the latest technologies, trends, and challenges in the business of building and operating web applications in the public cloud. If you work in DevOps or Internet Ops, you’ll know exactly what Ops Side means. For those who don’t, D...
E02 - Earthquakes and The Moon
December 14, 2020 20:00 - 25 minutes - 17.7 MBHost Hany Fahim tells a roller-coaster tale of an emergency situation that occurred one beautiful summer evening in 2012. When multiple client websites his company supported mysteriously went down without warning, Hany raced against the clock—quite literally, it turned out—to get everything back up and running. Although his alerts indicated that high load was at the heart of the issue, when Hany checked things out, he was in for a surprise. Nothing seemed to indicate anything should be wr...
E01 - Denial of Sleep
December 14, 2020 20:00 - 36 minutes - 24.8 MBHost Hany Fahim tells the fascinating and sometimes frightening story of some massive DoS attacks that knocked clients offline for extended periods of time, along with ransom letters demanding thousands of dollars. Hany and his team spent hundreds of hours dealing with the attacks, which led to a Denial of Sleep, too! This is a desperate, edge-of-the-seat tale that makes it clear that only those with nerves of steel should get into the Internet Ops business! And of course, the work demand...