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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.

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