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DevOps Intermediate

What is Observability?

The ability to understand a system's internal state from its external outputs through metrics, logs, and traces.

Observability rests on three pillars: Metrics (numerical measurements over time — CPU, request rate, error rate), Logs (discrete events with context — error messages, audit trails), and Traces (request flow across services — distributed tracing).

OpenTelemetry is the emerging standard for instrumentation. Tools include Prometheus (metrics), ELK/Loki (logs), Jaeger/Zipkin (traces), and Datadog/New Relic (all-in-one). Observability goes beyond monitoring — it helps answer questions you did not anticipate.

Related Terms

Service Mesh
An infrastructure layer that handles service-to-service communication, providing load balancing, encryption, and observability.
ELK Stack
A popular log management platform combining Elasticsearch (search), Logstash (processing), and Kibana (visualization).
Helm
A package manager for Kubernetes that simplifies deploying and managing applications using reusable, configurable charts.
API Gateway
A server that acts as the single entry point for API requests, handling routing, authentication, rate limiting, and monitoring.
Environment Variable
A dynamic value stored outside the application code that configures behavior without hardcoding sensitive or environment-specific data.
GitFlow
A branching model for Git that defines a strict workflow with feature, develop, release, hotfix, and main branches.
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