What is the difference between monitoring and observability?

Monitoring is the process of collecting and analyzing data from systems and applications to ensure their performance, availability, and reliability. It typically involves setting up predefined metrics, thresholds, and alerts to detect and respond to issues. Observability, on the other hand, is a broader concept that focuses on understanding the internal state of a system by analyzing its external outputs. It goes beyond predefined metrics and enables engineers to ask arbitrary questions about system behavior, making it easier to diagnose and troubleshoot complex issues.

What are the key components of an effective monitoring and observability strategy?

The key components of an effective monitoring and observability strategy include collecting and analyzing various types of data (such as metrics, logs, and traces), setting up meaningful alerts and thresholds, creating informative dashboards and visualizations, and incorporating feedback loops to continuously improve the system's performance and reliability.

How can I choose the right metrics for monitoring my system?

To choose the right metrics for monitoring your system, focus on those that provide meaningful insights into the system's performance, availability, and reliability. Consider using the 'RED' (Rate, Errors, Duration) or 'USE' (Utilization, Saturation, Errors) methodologies to identify key metrics. Additionally, involve stakeholders from different teams (such as development, operations, and business) to ensure that the chosen metrics align with the organization's goals and objectives.

What are some best practices for setting up alerts and thresholds in a monitoring system?

Best practices for setting up alerts and thresholds in a monitoring system include focusing on actionable alerts that indicate a real issue, avoiding alert fatigue by minimizing false positives and non-critical alerts, using dynamic thresholds that adapt to changing system behavior, and regularly reviewing and updating alert configurations to ensure their effectiveness.

How can I improve the observability of my system?

To improve the observability of your system, ensure that it generates comprehensive and structured logs, implement distributed tracing to track requests across services, and use tools and platforms that support querying and analyzing data in real-time. Additionally, foster a culture of observability within your organization by encouraging collaboration between teams, sharing knowledge and best practices, and continuously iterating on your monitoring and observability strategy.

Engineering

Monitoring & Observability

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Monitoring and observability is the process for tracking and analyzing the performance and behavior of software applications and infrastructure to ensure their smooth operation and rapid resolution of issues. Monitoring involves setting up alerts and metrics to detect anomalies, while observability encompasses logging, tracing, and visualization tools to help diagnose problems and optimize the system.

What You'll Learn

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Industry-Standard Expectations for Monitoring & Observability
Monitoring & Observability Cheat Sheet
Curated learning resources

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Monitoring & Observability Cheat Sheet
Here is a quick reference for the top 5 things you need to know about Monitoring & Observability.
1. Step 1: Establish Your Monitoring Objectives
  - Define what you want to monitor and why.
  - Establish performance metrics and thresholds to track.
  - Identify potential problem areas and error conditions.
2. Step 2: Choose the Right Monitoring Tools
  - Select monitoring tools that align with your objectives and infrastructure.
  - Evaluate the tools based on their features, ease of use, integration capabilities, and cost.
  - Consider using multiple tools to get a comprehensive view of your systems.
3. Step 3: Monitor Continuously
  - Set up alerts and notifications for critical events and thresholds.
  - Establish a monitoring schedule or on-call rotation to ensure timely response to issues.
  - Regularly review and analyze monitoring data to identify trends and areas for improvement.
4. Step 4: Implement Observability Techniques
  - Use distributed tracing to identify the root cause of issues.
  - Implement logging and event tracking to capture system activity and user behavior.
  - Apply machine learning and AI techniques to gain insights and automate monitoring tasks.
5. Step 5: Iterate and Improve
  - Continuously refine your monitoring and observability strategies based on feedback and results.
  - Regularly evaluate and update your tools and techniques to stay current with the latest trends and best practices.
  - Involve your team and stakeholders in the monitoring and observability process to ensure alignment and shared ownership.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between monitoring and observability?
  Monitoring is the process of collecting and analyzing data from systems and applications to ensure their performance, availability, and reliability. It typically involves setting up predefined metrics, thresholds, and alerts to detect and respond to issues. Observability, on the other hand, is a broader concept that focuses on understanding the internal state of a system by analyzing its external outputs. It goes beyond predefined metrics and enables engineers to ask arbitrary questions about system behavior, making it easier to diagnose and troubleshoot complex issues.
- What are the key components of an effective monitoring and observability strategy?
  The key components of an effective monitoring and observability strategy include collecting and analyzing various types of data (such as metrics, logs, and traces), setting up meaningful alerts and thresholds, creating informative dashboards and visualizations, and incorporating feedback loops to continuously improve the system's performance and reliability.
- How can I choose the right metrics for monitoring my system?
  To choose the right metrics for monitoring your system, focus on those that provide meaningful insights into the system's performance, availability, and reliability. Consider using the 'RED' (Rate, Errors, Duration) or 'USE' (Utilization, Saturation, Errors) methodologies to identify key metrics. Additionally, involve stakeholders from different teams (such as development, operations, and business) to ensure that the chosen metrics align with the organization's goals and objectives.
- What are some best practices for setting up alerts and thresholds in a monitoring system?
  Best practices for setting up alerts and thresholds in a monitoring system include focusing on actionable alerts that indicate a real issue, avoiding alert fatigue by minimizing false positives and non-critical alerts, using dynamic thresholds that adapt to changing system behavior, and regularly reviewing and updating alert configurations to ensure their effectiveness.
- How can I improve the observability of my system?
  To improve the observability of your system, ensure that it generates comprehensive and structured logs, implement distributed tracing to track requests across services, and use tools and platforms that support querying and analyzing data in real-time. Additionally, foster a culture of observability within your organization by encouraging collaboration between teams, sharing knowledge and best practices, and continuously iterating on your monitoring and observability strategy.

Curated Articles

How we curate

An Introduction to Metrics, Monitoring, and Alerting
Justin Ellingwood, Senior Technical Writer, DigitalOcean
This tutorial walks through how metrics, monitoring and alerting are related; what type of information is important to track; factors that affect what you choose to monitor; and important qualities of a metrics, monitoring and alerting system.
A Monitoring Maturity Model
James Turnbull, SVP of Engineering, Sotheby's
James' Monitoring Maturity Model outlines three stages of monitoring evolution: Manual, Reactive, and Proactive. Manual or None is typical in small organizations with limited IT staffing, while Reactive is common in small to medium enterprises and divisional IT organizations. Proactive is typical in web-centric organizations and mature startups, where monitoring is considered core to managing infrastructure and the business. It is interesting to note that organizations may not experience this evolution linearly or holistically, as different segments, business units, or divisions of an organization can have different levels of maturity.
Site Reliability Engineering, Chapter 6: Monitoring Distributed Systems
Rob Ewaschuk, Senior Staff Software Engineer, Google
This chapter of Google's SRE book defines some basic principles and best practices for building successful monitoring and alerting systems. It offers guidelines for what issues should interrupt a human via a page, and how to deal with issues that aren’t serious enough to trigger a page.
The RED Method: How to Instrument Your Services
Tom Wilkie, VP Product, Grafana Labs
Tom discusses how the USE (Utilization, Saturation, Errors) instrumentation method is appropriate for monitoring hardware, while the RED (rate, errors, duration) method is more appropriate for Microservices. He also compares the RED method with Google's Four Golden Signals.
Logs and Metrics
Cindy Sridharan, Infrastructure Engineer, imgix
Logs and metrics are two distinct entities that are often confused or conflated. Observability is key to gaining visibility into modern day applications and infrastructure, and logs and metrics are two of the three pillars of observability. Logs are an immutable record of discrete events and are usually emitted in plaintext, structured, or binary formats. Logs are great for exploratory analysis of outliers and anomaly detection, but can be expensive to process and store. Metrics are numbers measured over intervals of time and are optimized for storage and enable longer retention of data. Metrics are better suited for monitoring and profiling purposes and are more malleable to mathematical and statistical transformations.
Monitoring and Observability
Cindy Sridharan, Infrastructure Engineer, imgix
Cindy contrasts the terms "monitoring" and "observability", where "monitoring" shows the overall health of systems and "observability" provides highly granular insights into the behavior of systems along with rich context, for Debugging.