What is Observability? Metrics, Logs & Traces Overview

Observability has become a crucial component in managing modern distributed systems, offering insights beyond traditional monitoring by analyzing logs, metrics, and traces to understand the internal state and behavior of systems. It differs from monitoring by focusing on the "why" and "how" behind issues rather than just the "what" and "when," and is implemented using tools like OpenTelemetry, which standardizes the collection and processing of telemetry data across services. The three pillars of observability—metrics, logs, and traces—enable engineers to detect, investigate, and resolve issues effectively. Implementation involves automatic and manual instrumentation, with guidelines emphasizing starting simple and gradually adding complexity. Key metrics for observability include latency, throughput, error rates, and resource usage, each providing actionable insights for proactive system management. Despite its complexity and potential data volume challenges, effective observability implementation is highly rewarding as it enhances system reliability and performance, often leading to investment in a unified observability platform and AIOps for faster issue identification.