THWACK Monthly Mission - January 2017

[wabbott]

Thwacksters, it is important that you remember the journey to the cloud begins with one step.

In this mission you will encounter spiritual cloud guides on your way to the snow-capped peaks where happy little clouds roam. These guides include: Librato, Papertrail, TraceView, and Pingdom.  Use the wisdom and hints they give you each day to answer the questions.

By the end of your journey you will learn that SolarWinds Monitoring Cloud is a suite of SaaS products that helps you solve complex performance and reliability problems with your cloud infrastructure or apps.

We wish you luck as you embark on your journey to the cloud.

Wax on, wax off. Wax on, wax off.

JANUARY MISSION

Use the mission’s resources to complete the tasks and answer the questions for a chance to win!

• Correctly answer each question during the week and you'll be entered to win the weekly prize.
• Correctly answer all 20 questions over the course of the month and you'll be entered to win the Grand Prize: Oculus Rift + Oculus Touch

MISSION RULES

A new question will open every day (Monday - Friday) starting on January 9th.

Once a question has opened, it will remain open until February 5th @ 11:59pm.

Check the schedule below for exact open/close times.

Correctly answer all five questions within a given week and you’ll be entered to win the weekly prize:

• Week 1 Drawing January 16th: Remote control Sumo Wrestlers + Automatic sand drawing (zen garden)
• Week 2 Drawing January 23rd: Sphero BB8 + Force Band
• Week 3 Drawing January 30th: XBOX 1S + Battlefield
• Week 4 Drawing February 6th: Sonos Play:3
• Grand Prize Drawing February 6th: Oculus Rift + Oculus Touch

150 points are being awarded for each correctly answered question. There are 20 questions, which means you can earn a maximum of 3,000 points for this mission.

Weekly Prizes	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Winners
Week 1 - Librato: Remote control Sumo Wrestlers + Automatic sand drawing (zen garden) Complete questions 1-5 by January 15th to be entered to win
Week 2 - Papertrail: Sphero BB8 Complete questions 6-10 by January 22nd to be entered to win
Week 3 - TraceView: XBOX 1S + Battlefield Complete questions 11-15 by January 29th to be entered to win
Week 4 - Pingdom: Sonos Play:3 Complete questions 16-20 by February 5th to be entered to win
Correctly answer all 20 questions by February 5th and get entered to win the Grand Prize! Oculus Rift + Oculus Touch!

Official Terms & Conditions: US, UK, & Canada | Germany

[ecklerwr1]

Awe man this would be sweet!

[typin7]

My eyes were on the XBOX though

[mprobus]

Does the prize include everything pictured?  She's cute but my wife might not like it and it's another mouth to feed.

[esther]

Congrats to steshi​

[jeremymayfield]

Congratulation to you steshi​ enjoy that prize.  And if you don't need it, i have a Mini Desktop bowling set i would happily trade you, the ball is a rubber band ball.  I know temping right?  Right?!?

[jeremymayfield]

ok ok, LOL HA HA HA HA HA HA, just had to laugh at that for a second.... I am sure that is not a might, its a WILL NOT LIKE.  

[sans]

She doesn't look like she still lives in her parents basement, so she may be able to bring some additional income in.

[immanuvelc]

seems like you are good trader L0L 🙂

[jgrimes4292]

Since I Derped on question 4 last week I will have to hold out hope for the Sonos Play:3 . That thing looks rad.

[vinay.by]

Two more to go .............

[designerfx]

[DanielleH]

Who has all the questions correct so far?! (like this status)

What's your thoughts on this month's mission? Any of you in the process of moving to/monitoring in the Cloud? Has this month been helpful?

[rboyer]

It's funny to see Pingdom on here, since I trialed the platform a year ago to cut costs on what we currently used. If I recall, it couldn't do SSL transactions or was giving us too many false positives during the 30 day trial period. I'm guessing these have been fixed by now, but hard to tell. I'm guessing Solarwinds purchased them between then and now.

[tallyrich]

So far I have all the questions correct - I like the fact that you still have to check the hints just to be sure.

Office 365 is really the only thing we have in the cloud right not. With health care we tend to move less off site. I do enjoy hearing about all the other solarwinds products out there.

[pony10]

I have all the questions correct so far however with two more to go anything can happen.   

We are a financial organization so we tend to keep as much in house as possible for privacy concerns.  Not sure if we will move monitoring to the cloud though.  That might be a good fit from what I have been learning this month.

[robertcbrowning]

Most of our kit is still in-house, but we've also got a load in the cloud. I don't care where the functions are running, I just want to know that they are.

I like having to check every day as even the obvious answers are not necessarily the correct ones and the links often take me to a product or area that I've not seen before.

[rboyer]

The mission is pretty informative to see what Solarwinds has for SaaS. The monitoring we have is all in-house with the exception of our external website monitoring system and internet circuit monitoring. After looking through each of these, I'm starting to think Solarwinds is becoming the Cisco of monitoring products, in regards to acquisitions.

[Jfrazier]

So far I have all the questions correct...

Having to consider more cloud based things as life moves forward.

Still in favor of a hybrid approach.

[equalswql]

What could possibly be more cool than being in a holographic universe... within a holographic universe. Good luck to everyone!

[bobmarley]

I'm hoping they will add some additional browsers soon. Some sites are strictly created for mobile browsers so it would be nice to have a couple more options.

[michael.kent]

One more to go. Am I the only one that gives each question more scrutiny the closer we get to the end?

[niels.dutry]

I think we will succeed in answering all questions correctly since the last question is gonna be poll... Impossible to fail on that one!

[immanuvelc]

Like like your status.. and all green so far and One more to go

Well cloud approach is really good but a hybrid model is what be welcome at least in the near future.

May be after 5/10 years from now we move to complete cloud 🙂

[rschroeder]

100% success so far--but this mission's questions are too easy, IMHO.  Not to look a gift horse in the mouth (I mean, who doesn't love easy points?), but the mission questions require little thought or digging--the answers are right there on the page, and most of the multiple point correct choices end up being in the same position for every question.

I learn more about a product or a process if I have to think, if I have to dig.  I know folks have complained about tough questions in the past, but that's ok as long as the questions aren't tough because they're wrong or confusing.

I really like the style and tone and graphics--and the brevity(!)-- of today's Video Hint.  It's something I can bring to my Apps Analysts and Marketing team to whet their appetite without worrying about losing them to boredom.  Performance & Real User Monitoring | Pingdom

This one's a winner.

[rharland2012]

We're mostly on-prem right now, but there are a couple of initiatives in place that will undoubtedly bring some of our monitoring needs into cloud. Yes, it has been useful! It seems SW has a pretty fleshed-out and robust set of monitoring tools for this emerging need...nice.

[ecklerwr1]

Somehow I haven't messed one up this month!  I often blow one or two questions... usually from rushing.

[familyofcrowes]

I like this because I'm learning about some tools I know little about.  We dont have a big cloud presence, but as we slowly go that way I like the option available to know whats going on.

[smoked_angus]

Good morning, I really appreciated this month's contest. At least in my situation, this contest is the only reason I know about your cloud monitoring suite. I was aware of pingdom, however I only receive weekly redundant emails about bandwidth hogs. Well worth the effort in my case for my companies long term planning for monitoring. Thanks.@ DanielleH

[bobmarley]

Researching todays question was nice Learned something.

[danielv]

Sneaky trick question today.  The top portion of the hint page only mentions part of the correct answer... but if you scroll all the way down you get the whole answer in it's entirety.  Pretty lame to be disqualified in such a fashion.  Oh well.

[alvin.reddy]

Yeah its Goooood

[jaywi11]

Anyone else getting this? I seem to be getting some permissions issues for accessing the poll for the last question of the month. (https://thwack.solarwinds.com/polls/3031)  Error reads:-

Unauthorized

Access to this place or content is restricted. If you think this is a mistake, please contact your administrator or the person who directed you here. 

[Radioteacher]

I am good so far as well.  I was a bit nervous clicking OK on this one.

RT

[wabbott]

Should be resolved now. Let me know if you're still having issues!

[jaywi11]

Wendy Abbott has advised issue is now corrected.

[hansons]

Gutted got one wrong overall with a miss click but still on for a chance to win the Sonos!

[stupendous]

Thoroughly enjoyed this mission!

[immanuvelc]

Yo Yo... All GREEN ALL GREEN

I am also in one of the countries listed as eligible countries..

So fingers crossed.

[yaquaholic]

All green - but it would be greedy to expect to win again

[hansons]

Well if you do and the guilt is to much feel free to send it my way

[jeremymayfield]

And another month bites the dust, thanks for a great challenge this month.

[ZibaK]

Well Done!  Happy Friday!

[mbird]

First time I've finished a month all green, yay! Go me!

[ecklerwr1]

Your getting really close to 200k too!  I just finally passed 200k.

[nickzourdos]

That's a wrap! Best of luck to everyone

[tallyrich]

This was an enjoyable mission - lot's of information.

[designerfx]

I'm totally going to catch up on you guys

[TechUser123456]

I am just happy I got them all correct this month and spent all my points getting a couple of those hoodies.....they are great! lol

[robertcbrowning]

All done.
Now waiting patiently for the prizes to be delivered.

[michael.kent]

Me too robertcbrowning​ . See you on 1st March Myself and steve.wallis​are going.