CrowdStrike's Costly Calamity: Don't Deploy Disasters

Executive Summary

• CrowdStrike update crashes 8.5M+ devices

• Incident exposes weak DevOps practices

• Leaders must balance speed with reliability

CrowdStrike's Costly Calamity: Don't Deploy Disasters

CrowdStrike's recent global device massacre (8.5 million and counting!) is a reminder that 'move fast and break things' isn't just a motto, it's a lifestyle. But fear not, weary IT warriors! The secret to avoiding such digital disasters is simple: Good DevOps Practices. (Who knew?)

In the race to be the next unicorn, reliability often takes a backseat to speed. But hey, protecting customers is kinda our thing, right?

As Silicon Valley’s Tyler Durden says: 'The first rule of DevOps is: You do not test in production.' CrowdStrike seems to have missed that memo.

Let's face it: bugs, crashes, and system meltdowns are the spice of a developer's life. We can't prevent them, but we can prepare for them. Think of it as disaster prepping, but for code.

Here are a few things to remember.

Actionable Insights

• Always have automated tests for your product’s core services.

• Use CI/CD and manage deployments and infrastructure with 100% automation.

• A non-production internal release environment for preliminary testing, and for consumer facing services, always have a single click rollback button in your Bat-cave.

  • Gather crash and error metrics and use them to do partial releases when operating on large scales.

Leadership Pro Tip

Remember, the cost of a major outage far outweighs the investment price of robust testing, rollback procedures and a good CI/CD workflow.

Invest in your DevOps practices now, or prepare to explain to angry customers why your system is cosplaying as a brick later.

ciao!!! 😉 

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