```json
{
    "title": "Performance Alerting: Is Louis Gray the Canary in Your Coal Mine?",
    "url": "https://performancezen.com/2008/10/10/performance-alerting-is-louis-gray-the-canary-in-your-coal-mine/",
    "datePublished": "2008-10-10",
    "dateModified": "2008-10-10",
    "language": "en-US",
    "description": "Yesterday in the Fast Company Live Fail Whale session [mention on Scoble's blog here], Paul Bucheit of FriendFeed jokingly said that his company's external alerting mechanism was Louis Gray. I…",
    "author": "spierzchala",
    "publisher": "Performance Zen"
}
```

# Performance Alerting: Is Louis Gray the Canary in Your Coal Mine?

Yesterday in the Fast Company Live

*Fail Whale*

session [mention on Scoble's blog

[here](http://scobleizer.com/2008/10/09/thanks-for-help-on-scalability-questions/)

],

[Paul Bucheit](http://www.linkedin.com/in/paulbuchheit)

of

[FriendFeed](http://friendfeed.com/)

jokingly said that his company's external alerting mechanism was

[Louis Gray](http://www.linkedin.com/in/louisgray)

.
I cringed when I read that, as the last people who should be letting you know you have an issue are your visitors or customers. I know that FriendFeed is new and may not have the ops team that

[Dorion Carroll](http://www.linkedin.com/in/dorioncarroll)

and

[Technorati](http://technorati.com/)

have developed over the years, but it is still critical.
You have done a lot as a company to build a brand. Don't let your internal and external performance sully your reputation. There are a number of low-cost and free ways to watch your performance and alert you before things break.
Louis Gray is a great guy. But he is not an objective and reliable way to alert you when something is wrong with your site.