Observability as an engineering enabler
Problem solver Tod Hansmann discusses observability: What it is, why it means different things, and how to get started.Problem solver Tod Hansmann of Catalyst joins me to discuss “observability”: What it is, why it means different things to different people, and how to get started if it’s new for you.
In this episode:
- What is observability (o11y)?
- What can observability do for you?
- What metrics should you track?
- How does observability relate to logging, alerting, monitoring, and other practices?
- Who should be responsbile for obervability?
- How heavily should upper management be involved?
- How does observability relate to culture?
- CI/CD as a prerequisite for observability
- Why metrics are better than logs
- Surprising metrics that can be important
- The relationship between monitoring and automated testing
- Good observability as an enabler for canary deployments, test in production, and other practices
- How to define service level objectives
- How do you define “uptime”
- How to address corner cases
- Why being on call is desireable