observability-zero-to-hero day -1

💡 Introduction to Observability

• Observability is the ability to understand the internal state of a system by analyzing the data it produces, including logs, metrics, and traces.

• Monitoring (Metrics): involves tracking system metrics like CPU usage, memory usage, and network performance. Provides alerts based on predefined thresholds and conditions

  • Monitoring tells us what is happening.

• Logging (Logs): involves the collection of log data from various components of a system.

  • Logging explains why it is happening.

• Tracing (Traces): involves tracking the flow of a request or transaction as it moves through different services and components within a system.

  • Tracing shows how it is happening.

🤔 Why Monitoring?

• Monitoring helps us keep an eye on our systems to ensure they are working properly.

• Purpose: maintaining the health, performance, and security of IT environments.

• It enables early detection of issues, ensuring that they can be addressed before causing significant downtime or data loss.

• We use monitoring to:

  • Detect Problems Early

  • Measure Performance:

  • Ensure Availability:

🤔 Why Observability?

• Observability helps us understand why our systems are behaving the way they are.

• It’s like having a detailed map and tools to explore and diagnose issues.

• We use observability to:

  • Diagnose Issues:

  • Understand Behavior:

  • Improve Systems:

🆚 What is the Exact Difference Between Monitoring and Observability?

• 🔥 Monitoring is when and what of a system error, and observability is the why and how

🔭 Does Observability Cover Monitoring?

• Yes!! Monitoring is subset of Observability

• Observability is a broader concept that includes monitoring as one of its components.

• monitoring focuses on tracking specific metrics and alerting on predefined conditions

• observability provides a comprehensive understanding of the system by collecting and analyzing a wider range of data, including logs, metrics, and traces.

🖥️ What Can Be Monitored?

• Infrastructure: CPU usage, memory usage, disk I/O, network traffic.

• Applications: Response times, error rates, throughput.

• Databases: Query performance, connection pool usage, transaction rates.

• Network: Latency, packet loss, bandwidth usage.

• Security: Unauthorized access attempts, vulnerability scans, firewall logs.

👀 What Can Be Observed?

• Logs: Detailed records of events and transactions within the system.

• Metrics: Quantitative data points like CPU load, memory consumption, and request counts.

• Traces: Data that shows the flow of requests through various services and components.

🆚 Monitoring on Bare-Metal Servers vs. Monitoring Kubernetes

• Bare-Metal Servers:

  • Direct Access: Easier access to hardware metrics and logs.

  • Fewer Layers: Simpler environment with fewer abstraction layers.

• Kubernetes:

  • Dynamic Environment: Challenges with monitoring ephemeral containers and dynamic scaling.

  • Distributed Nature: Requires tools that can handle distributed systems and correlate data from multiple sources.

🆚 Observing on Bare-Metal Servers vs. Observing Kubernetes

• Bare-Metal Servers:

  • Simpler Observability: Easier to collect and correlate logs, metrics, and traces due to fewer components and layers.

• Kubernetes:

  • Complex Observability: Requires sophisticated tools to handle the dynamic and distributed nature of containers and microservices.

  • Integration: Necessitates the integration of multiple observability tools to get a complete picture of the system.

⚒️ What are the Tools Available?

• Monitoring Tools: Prometheus, Grafana, Nagios, Zabbix, PRTG.

• Observability Tools: ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana), EFK Stack (Elasticsearch, Fluent Bit, Kibana) Splunk, Jaeger, Zipkin, New Relic, Dynatrace, Datadog.

Support my work-

Stay connected on LinkedIn Profile

Stay up to date with GitHub Profile

Feel free to reach out to me, if you have any other queries.

Happy Learning!