;( Your PC has a problem…LM Envision pinpointed the issue for IT teams immediately

The recent CrowdStrike outage highlights the urgent need for robust observability solutions and reliable IT infrastructure. On that Friday, employees started their days with unwelcome surprises. They struggled to boot up their systems, and travelers, including some of our own, faced disruptions in their journeys. These personal frustrations and inconveniences were just the beginning. The damage was much deeper with businesses facing operational downtime, financial losses, and reputational damage as a result of the outage. This incident surfaces the importance of a unified observability view across IT infrastructure to mitigate risks effectively.

Key takeaways

The CrowdStrike outage underscored the critical importance of comprehensive IT observability to minimize and even prevent operational downtime, financial losses, and reputational damage.

Unlike basic monitoring systems, enterprise-grade observability offers deep insights into system health, performance, and dependencies, providing a unified view that reduces complexity and accelerates troubleshooting.

LM Envision provided a centralized platform for all MS Windows systems on-prem, virtual, and in public clouds for every aspect of telemetry – metrics, logs, topology, and configurations. Our anomaly detection in metrics and logs alerted the support teams of this developing incident.

LM Edwin AI effectively reduced alert noise and provided advanced analytics, helping customers correlate alerts and pinpoint root causes quickly, thus significantly shortening troubleshooting time.

Customers with robust operational maturity through LM Envision and Edwin AI were quick to recover from the CrowdStrike issue during the weekend. When end-users logged into the systems Monday morning, they didn't experience any downtime.

Why enterprise-grade IT observability matters

While basic monitoring systems that focus solely on “up/down” status provide limited visibility, they often fail to identify the root cause of issues. Enterprise-grade IT observability goes beyond traditional monitoring by offering deep insights into system health, performance, and dependencies, which are crucial for effective troubleshooting.

Enterprise-grade IT observability capabilities, enhanced by advanced logging tools and generative AI companions, provide a single pane of glass view that reduces complexity and enables more effective problem resolution. By integrating various data sources and offering contextual insights, proactive observability tools significantly shorten Mean Time to Identification (MTTI) and Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR).

How LogicMonitor customers worked through major disruption during the CrowdStrike IT outage

During the CrowdStrike outage, LogicMonitor provided meaningful contextual information through the Windows log data ingested at or around the time the issue occurred, enabling customers to take the relevant course of action. Here’s a detailed account of how we helped one of our customers navigate the issue with LogicMonitor’s help.

A customer’s immediate response and resolution

During out-of-working hours, LogicMonitor detected a critical “down” condition on the servers across a customer’s Windows environment, ensuring no critical warning went unnoticed. As part of the troubleshooting process, the anomalies and logs provided by LM Envision offered additional context. The ‘message’ field in each anomaly highlighted unusual patterns, helping to identify potential issues more effectively.

The IT team was alerted immediately and able to detect the exact extent of the affected systems. The detailed, meaningful, and insightful context provided by the LM Envision dashboards allowed for rapid analysis and quick decision-making. This enabled them to efficiently monitor the restoration process, significantly improving their MTTI/MTTR.

With LogicMonitor’s proactive monitoring and detailed alert system, the customer was able to minimize downtime and mitigate potential breaches of SLAs during the outage. The detailed insights provided by LM Envision enabled the IT team to respond swiftly and effectively, reducing the impact on business continuity despite the widespread scope of the CrowdStrike incident.

How Edwin AI enhancements saved the day 

One customer leveraging Edwin AI was able to correlate over 500 alerts to the CrowdStrike incident, showcasing the platform’s efficiency in reducing alert noise. Edwin AI’s advanced analytics and correlation capabilities were instrumental in quickly identifying the cause and effects of the situation.

Another customer using Edwin AI successfully identified the root cause of the failed CrowdStrike Falcon service. This customer used LogicMonitor to identify process-level failures, allowing them to correlate and pinpoint the exact cause of the disruption. Edwin AI’s proactive insights and detailed analysis significantly shortened their troubleshooting time.

The real-life stories of our customers emphasize the significance of not only advanced AI capabilities but also the crucial role of enterprise-grade IT observability in effectively managing widespread IT incidents. The CrowdStrike incident is a stark reminder of the pressing need for comprehensive observability solutions, not just for a select few businesses but for all enterprises to thrive in the digital era.

Wrapping up

The CrowdStrike outage has reinforced the critical importance of enterprise-grade IT observability. LogicMonitor’s hybrid observability platform, powered by AI, provides businesses with what they need to detect issues early, respond proactively, and maintain business continuity. By empowering customers during outages and preventing potential disruptions, LogicMonitor helps protect brand reputation and customer satisfaction.