Observability and IT monitoring

Observability vs. monitoring

Observability is not a substitute for monitoring, although they are complementary.

	IT monitoring	observability
What is its purpose?	informs if the system is operating	allows finding out why the parts of the digital ecosystem are not operating
What does it deliver?	information on the system operation (system is active/inactive) at a given moment according to the metrics	information on the course of failure via linking metrics, logs, and traces
goal	crash reporting—delivering the information about the incidents	alarming and understanding the cause of failure – providing the information about the events and their causes (source of the problem)
approach	reactive	proactive

Observability and IT monitoring by Linux Polska — how we may help you

Advisory in creating an o11y strategy

Consulting on selecting an o11y or IT monitoring solution tailored to business needs and its implementation in a chosen environment

Audit of o11y and IT monitoring solution

Modernization and development of o11y and IT monitoring tools

Implementation of central repository for logs and telemetry data

Implementation of information flow — reporting and alerting

Competence development in o11y and IT monitoring area

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What is observability?

Observability is a data workflow model, thanks to which the company acquires the ability to understand what happens to every part of its complex digital ecosystem, such as:

hardware-system infrastructure,
networking layer/tier,
IT services,
applications (including ERP, accounting, customer service systems),
business processes

Observability is based on gathering and analyzing the data from various points of the digital ecosystem in order to gain the information about its state and operation. Thanks to it, it is possible to determine the real cause of failure or of lowering of the efficiency, as well as to notice the tendencies and patterns of the system’s operation. As a result, observability allows faster and more effective reacting to the problems and avoiding them in the future.

Three pillars of observability — data sources

The data sources, called the pillars of observability, are:

logs – information registers generated by the various elements of the systems i.e., servers, applications, tools etc.;
metrics – system data parameters, such as use of resources, response time etc.;
traces – in the sense of transaction tracking (i.e. APM), comprehensive information of the connections and parts of the code’s usage.

Observability solutions use those data to aim to acquire the full overview of the condition and operation of the IT system.

Applying observability in practice means

Using the adequate tools, which gather, analyze and present data from various sources in the real time, which allow determining the system’s condition and identification of the roots of the problems.

Designing, implementing and maintaining each of the IT solutions in such a way that they deliver the crucial information on their own operation parameters.

Increasing the awareness of IT teams in the field of interpreting the data about the systems and detection of the cause of issues.

Building the proactive approach to the managing of crashes, sharing the data between the IT teams and improving the systems.

Observability — benefits for various groups of stakeholders

IT managers — the ability to evaluate the productivity and efficiency of the business applications, which allows better planning and decision-making.
Data analysts — gathering and analyzing the information, which help to understand the behaviors of users and identify the potential challenges and issues.
Developers — monitoring and debugging the applications and systems, which enables quick diagnosing and fixing the problem.
Testers — monitoring and ensuring the quality of the software, which helps in an earlier identification and earlier solving of potential issues.
System administrators — monitoring and managing the stems and infrastructure, which allows for a quicker reacting to the potential difficulties and increases the performance.