Coretechs’ Take on Code Monitoring

April 2023

While your code could stand up on its own forever, technology continues to evolve, hackers continue to grow and get more comfortable with all of the code out there, and it becomes easier to break your system. To keep your system safe and up to date, Coretechs keeps track of each piece of your software and lets you know when it needs maintenance.

How do we stay on top of monitoring your system?

From keeping a log of all of the systems we’ve worked on to migrating systems previously on unsupported technology, Coretechs has taking care of your code down pat. 

Reasons why we work so hard to keep your versions up to date:

  • To keep the system ready for active development at a moments notice
  • Bugs / security concerns
  • Code value goes down when not maintained

Our regular monitoring cycle

First, we keep everything on an internal record and complete checks on a set interval to make sure everything stays up to date.

Along the same lines as server monitoring, we have a repository of all entities and systems that we keep track of. Although the primary responsibility for your systems is, of course, your responsibility, Coretechs will do everything we can to help maintain your server boxes and/or code setup, so we monitor them closely because if they go down we are the ones jumping to get them back up.

There are different kinds of clients and their needs vary, but in general, we monitor the following:

  • Server Box
  • Language
  • Framework
  • Code Version
  • OS Updates 

There are different rules for all systems, and frameworks are not always required. For example, for WordPress server boxes, we often just monitor the code version, security scans, and plugin monitoring. Sometimes we also monitor OS updates depending on what the client needs. Think of it this way; you go to a cafe and order a cup of coffee. The liquid coffee is the code and the cup is the framework. 

Sometimes you may bring your own cup to the cafe, just like clients sometimes approach us with their own framework that they don’t need help in monitoring. Either way, everything interacts with the same server, or cafe, and that’s why we monitor them so closely even if we are not monitoring everything.

These recurring checks are a responsibility shared between people appointed as an authorized point of contact. Coretechs team members meet every 3 weeks to review all entities, and any that are flagged are brought up, a ticket is created, and resolved as soon as possible.

When code is no longer supported

When a major branch or version of technology is no longer supported, your system will need to be migrated to a newer version. When CentOS was flagged to be no longer supported, this change wasn’t going to happen in the immediate future after it was announced, however, to be prepared we immediately began IDing systems and slowly migrating them over to the newer version. 

We monitor big changes even if they are years in advance to smoothly and slowly handle things so there’s not a last-minute frenzy to patch.

We don’t always need to update versions right away

It’s important to remember that when you get notified of a code version update for your software, it doesn’t always mean you should run it. When you get a notification on your phone that it needs an update and you sit on it for a while, maybe a week, many times the update had a few bugs that needed to get worked out during that time, and updating later was actually best.

Waiting to update helps us to see what happens with the latest version and make sure there aren’t any kinks or needed patches before updating everything else. Some updates may not be worth the time and can actually mess with your code, causing bugs and security concerns.

If you need assistance reviewing or updating your system, give us a call today.