AdvancedTopic 102 of 104Software & Computing
Observability
Logs, metrics and traces let engineers understand a running system's internal state.
In depth
Observability lets you understand a system's internal state from its outputs: logs, metrics and distributed traces (OpenTelemetry), plus alerting and dashboards. SLIs/SLOs/error budgets quantify reliability. It supports debugging in production of distributed systems.
Key points
- Three pillars
- Structured logs
- Golden signals: latency, traffic, errors, saturation
ExampleA trace shows which of 12 microservices made a request slow.
What is Observability?
Logs, metrics and traces let engineers understand a running system's internal state.
Why is it important to understand observability?
Observability shows what a running system is doing, so problems can be found and fixed quickly in production.
What are logs, metrics and traces?
Logs record events, metrics are numbers measured over time, and traces follow a request across services to show where time is spent.
Why is observability different from monitoring?
Monitoring checks known conditions, while observability lets you ask new questions about unexpected behaviour.
How is Observability used in practice?
Typical applications include finding why a checkout service slowed down using traces, setting an alert when the error rate rises above a threshold and reading logs to see the sequence of events before a crash.
What should I learn before Observability?
Study "MLOps and ethics" first (topic 101 of 104 in Software & Computing). It covers the groundwork this topic builds on.
What are the key points of Observability?
Three pillars. Structured logs. Golden signals: latency, traffic, errors, saturation.
Can you give an example of Observability?
A trace shows which of 12 microservices made a request slow.
What comes after Observability?
The next topic is "Infrastructure as code", which builds directly on this one.
How difficult is Observability?
It is classed as Advanced in Software & Computing (topic 102 of 104). It is an advanced topic. It assumes you are comfortable with the intermediate topics in Software & Computing.