Company
Date Published
Author
Gavin Cahill
Word count
1835
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

Chaos Engineering and resilience testing, which involve intentionally injecting failures to test system reliability, are increasingly essential for companies prioritizing uptime and availability. These practices help uncover hidden dependencies and prevent unexpected outages, but organizations face a choice between building their own fault injection tools or purchasing commercial solutions. Building in-house allows for customization and control but requires significant engineering time and resources, potentially leading to scalability and security challenges. Conversely, buying a commercial tool offers immediate usability, expert support, and broad compatibility across platforms, though it comes with higher upfront costs and less control over product development. A case study of a major insurance company highlights how purchasing a tool like Gremlin provided comprehensive test coverage and faster time to value compared to building in-house solutions. Ultimately, while buying may reduce control, it enables quicker implementation to improve system reliability, which can be crucial in preventing costly downtime.