Observability Notes

mindmap
  root((Observability))
    Signals
      Traces
      ::icon(fa fa-book)
      Metrics
        Aggregations over a period of time<br/>of numeric data<br/>about your infrastructure or application
          System error rate
          CPU utilization
          Request rate for given service
      Logs
      Baggage
    Telemetry
      Data emitted from a system<br/>about its behaviour
    Reliability
      When the service does what users expect it to do
    Service Levels
      SLI - Service Level Indicator
        Represents a measurement of a service's behaviour
        Measures your service from the perspective of the user
            Ie: Speed at which a web page loads
      SLO - Service Level Objective
        Means by which reliability is communicated to the org/teams
        Accomplished by attaching one or more SLIs to business value

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Observability

Observability allows us to understand a system from the outside, enabling us to ask questions about it without needing to know its internal mechanics.
It allows us to easily troubleshoot and addressing unfamiliar issues, often referred to as "unknown unknowns" and helps us answer the question, "Why is this happening?"

Instrumentation

To ask questions about a system, the application needs to be properly instrumented.
This means the code must emit signals such as traces, metrics, and logs. An application is well-instrumented when developers have all necessary information for troubleshooting without needing to add more instrumentation.

OpenTelemetry is an observability framework that instruments application code, facilitating the management of telemetry data throughout the entire stack. It gathers traces, metrics, and logs from across the system, enhancing its observability.