Architecture & DesignIntermediate
Observability
Pronunciationob-zer-va-BIL-i-tee
Definition
Observability is the measure of how well you can understand the internal state of a system based solely on the data it produces. It relies on three pillars: logs, metrics, and traces.
Where you hear it
In discussions about system reliability, incident response, and infrastructure maintenance.
Examples
We need to improve our observability to debug these intermittent latency spikes.
Adding better observability tools helped us identify the root cause of the system failure.
Common mistake
Thinking that observability is just a synonym for monitoring; monitoring tells you that a system is broken, while observability helps you understand why it is broken.
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