Monitoring and Observability
Monitoring and Observability is a software engineering concept focused on understanding the internal state of a system through its external outputs. Monitoring involves collecting and analyzing predefined metrics and logs to track system health and performance, while observability extends this by enabling the exploration of unknown issues through rich telemetry data like traces, logs, and metrics. Together, they provide insights into system behavior, facilitate troubleshooting, and ensure reliability in complex, distributed environments.
Developers should learn and implement monitoring and observability to maintain system reliability, detect anomalies, and reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) for incidents. It is essential for modern applications, especially microservices and cloud-native architectures, where traditional monitoring falls short due to increased complexity. Use cases include performance optimization, debugging production issues, ensuring compliance with SLAs, and supporting DevOps practices like continuous deployment.