The blog post, created in collaboration with Lightrun team members Itai Tieger, Roy Chen, and Tom Granot, explores how developers can achieve full-cycle observability for applications using the Elastic Stack and Lightrun. It highlights the challenges developers face in managing logs, such as inconsistent formatting and distribution across multiple hosts, which complicate error tracking and data analysis. The article discusses using the Elastic Stack to centralize log storage and analysis, providing a step-by-step guide on integrating Java applications, like the Spring PetClinic, with Elastic for better log management. Additionally, it introduces Lightrun as a tool for real-time observability that allows developers to add logs on-demand without redeploying applications, which is beneficial for identifying and resolving issues in complex, fast-evolving software environments. The article concludes with an emphasis on how Lightrun and Elastic together can enhance developers’ abilities to monitor and debug applications efficiently.