Welcome 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, DevOps is a culture of development and IT operations teams working together.

And before you stop reading, assuming that Tales From the Ops Side will be too technical or dry, hold on! Hany is an outstanding storyteller and uses everyday examples as analogies to make his episodes accessible and engaging.

He takes listeners on some incredible journeys as he describes the extent to which he and his team sometimes go to resolve client issues. Be prepared to hear about leap-seconds, earthquakes and the moon, repressive regimes in Brazil, and Hany’s favourite errors. Yes! All these disparate topics help make up Tales From The Ops Side.

Based in Toronto, Canada, stack.io helps clients implement DevOps practices and adopt a DevOps culture, so that they can focus on their core business services, web application development.

In this trailer episode Hany discusses stack.io’s objectives, its origin story, the latest trends in DevOps, and what it’s been like launching, growing, and running a tech start-up.

Hany attributes his success to the fact that he’s an incredibly curious guy, and a heads-down kind of guy, too. He focuses intensely on the problem before him. This allows him to maintain composure when others could feel overwhelmed.

For example, in Episode One - Denial of Sleep, Hany digs into some pretty vicious and sustained DoS attacks, along with a ransom note for thousands of dollars. Hany’s calmness, curiosity, and ability to dig deep saw him though. 

If you work in Internet Ops or appreciate well-told stories full of surprising facts told with intrigue and humour, Tales From The Ops Side is for you!

And now, let’s hear some Tales From the Ops Side with Hany Fahim, interviewed by Sheelagh Caygill.

Host 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 demands ingenuity, creativity, and a penchant for research.

Should Internet Ops professionals pay ransom fees? How did Hany keep focused and come up with viable solutions? How did he maintain his composure when, on the inside, he was a ball of stress, unable to eat or sleep, having already spent thousands of dollars dealing with these attacks. These are just a few of the questions Hany asks and answers in this episode.

Denial of Sleep is an accessible story, thanks to Hany’s use of an analogy - the coffee shop. This shop represents a web application, and the loyal coffee drinkers are the end users. Meanwhile, the sidewalks, roads, and highways serve as the various networks that people can use to get to the shop. This is the World Wide Web we all know.

Connect with Hany at his company stack.io and LinkedIn.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with anyone you think will enjoy it. And if you can give us a review on Apple Podcasts, we’ll be grateful!

Host 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 wrong. So, what could have possibly all these different systems to go down all at once?

After finding an oddly simple solution, Hany traced the root of the problem back to an unlikely place: time keeping. This discovery took Hany down a research rabbit hole—one that changed his understanding of space and time, and the meaning of interconnectedness. Hany reflects on the unpredictability of the universe itself in this episode, and his tenacious spirit that summer night shows how important it is to rise to the occasion in Ops when things go awry.

Earthquakes and The Moon is an intriguing deep-dive into science, time, and the physics of the universe. Hany’s story twists and turns to show how a single second, the Moon, and an earthquake half a world away can change the course of history.

Hany is founder and CEO of stack.io and you can connect with him there, or on LinkedIn.

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with anyone you think will enjoy it. And if you can give us a review on Apple Podcasts, we’ll be grateful!