I Upgraded Request Tracker with an AI Co-Pilot. Here’s What Actually Happened.

I Upgraded Request Tracker with an AI Co-Pilot. Here’s What Actually Happened.
I Upgraded Request Tracker with an AI Co-Pilot. Here's What Actually Happened.

Request Tracker 4.4 reached end of life in November 2025. I’d been running RT 4.4.4 in a container on one of my Linode servers since 2020, and the upgrade to RT 6.0.2 had been sitting in my backlog for months. It’s the kind of task that’s never urgent until it is. You and I both

Designing a Robust Monitoring System

Reading Ted Dziuba’s article Monitoring Theory article, I was reminded of several conventions that I have developed over the years to help with monitoring servers, network devices, software services, batch processes, etc. First, break down your data points into levels so that you can decide how to route them. Second avoid interrupt driven technology like email, it lowers your productivity and prohibits good analysis techniques.