Metafor Software: Detecting Unexpected Changes in Your Computers

Downtime for any website can be devastating. It doesn’t matter if the occurrence last for 10 minutes or 10 days, the result is always chaos.

But with the way the Internet is programmed, such anomalies are unavoidable. Even the largest websites in the world can suffer downtimes and that includes Google. Recently, the heart of the Internet skipped a beat and caused Gmail and many other Google features to go down for 18 grueling minutes—a lifetime for many users.

The solution for such a crisis is often time-consuming troubleshooting. Technicians will spend minutes upon hours of trial and error, attempting to locate the problematic server among a hundred other servers.

But now Vancouver-based Metafor Software have developed advanced algorithms that will quickly distinguish server drifts, shorten troubleshooting time and prevent red herrings.

Metafor Software is the industry’s first provider of environment anomaly detection and solution for the web and data centre applications. By quickly locating inconsistencies, Metafor can replace manual troubleshooting with automated diagnostics and prevent environment anomalies before they impact the quality of service.

Metafor is a cloud-based tool that is able to check servers for anomalies hourly, daily or only on certain days. The program would automatically send an email alerting that a server has drifted from a desired state. This feature would mitigate downtime from occurring and highlight areas within the servers that need addressing. 

Problematic changes in servers are unexpected and that is what makes them so hard to detect. Even the smallest change that may have slipped into the system can bring down a Goliath like Google. And without software like Metafor, programmers wouldn’t notice the problem until they apply new configurations into the system.

“Metafor provides instant actionable insight,” said Toufic Boubez, CTO, Metafor Software. “It’s a standalone solution that fills a critical gap in the DevOps troubleshooting kit by preventing drift in environments where change is continuous and constant.”

Boubez was previously the cofounder of Layer 7, which was acquired in April by CA Technologies for $155 million.

Metafor Software was named to 2013 ICT Emerging Rockets list as part of the Ready to Rocket recognition program, which showcases British Columbia’s growth leaders of tomorrow in the technical sector.  

“All of us at Metafor are honored to be a part of such a prestigious list of companies,” says Jenny Yang, CEO, Metafor Software. “If the talks today at Monitorama are any indication, anomaly detection will become a critical component in the DevOps tool chain. The coming year is going to be exciting!”

Metafor offers its anomaly detection solution free of charge to anyone who joins its Beta program. A task that was once tedious can now be routine, with a single command Metafor Software will perform troubleshooting, release validation and alert problematic anomalies before your morning coffee is ready.