Observability vs Traditional Monitoring

Developers should learn observability to effectively manage modern cloud-native and microservices architectures, where systems are dynamic and failures can be unpredictable meets developers should learn traditional monitoring when working in legacy or on-premises environments, or when maintaining systems with predictable, stable workloads where historical baselines are effective. Here's our take.

Observability

Nice Pick

Developers should learn observability to effectively manage modern cloud-native and microservices architectures, where systems are dynamic and failures can be unpredictable

Pros

• It is crucial for troubleshooting production issues, ensuring reliability, and improving user experience in applications with high complexity and scale
• Related to: monitoring, distributed-tracing

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Traditional Monitoring

Developers should learn traditional monitoring when working in legacy or on-premises environments, or when maintaining systems with predictable, stable workloads where historical baselines are effective

Pros

• It is crucial for ensuring system reliability, compliance with SLAs, and troubleshooting known issues in production environments, such as server crashes or network outages
• Related to: log-management, alerting-systems

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Observability is a concept while Traditional Monitoring is a methodology. We picked Observability based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Observability wins

Based on overall popularity. Observability is more widely used, but Traditional Monitoring excels in its own space.