observability
system visibility for diagnosis
In software, observability is how well engineers can see what a system is doing and find problems from its data.
observability of [a system]; observability into [a service]; build observability into [software]
- The team added tracing to improve observability across the payment service.
- Good observability helped engineers find the cause of the outage in minutes.
- Without observability, a distributed system can fail in ways that are very hard to diagnose.
- The app has better observability now, so errors are easier to find.
- Logs and metrics improve observability.
quality of being observable
Observability is how easy it is to see, notice, or measure something.
observability of [something]; [something]'s observability
- The observability of the comet depends on the weather and the amount of light pollution.
- The study was limited by the poor observability of some animal behaviors at night.
- Researchers discussed the observability of the effect before choosing a measurement method.
- The star's observability is better in winter.
- Fog reduced the observability of the mountain.
inferability of system state
In control engineering, observability means that you can work out what is happening inside a system by looking at its outputs.
observability of [a system]; test/check/analyze observability
- The engineer checked the observability of the model before designing the controller.
- An observability matrix can show whether the system's state can be inferred from its outputs.
- Sensor placement affects the observability of the robotic arm.
- The model has good observability because the sensors provide enough output data.
- Base: observability
- Plural: observabilities
data observability
1monitoring data health
Data observability helps teams know whether their data is complete, fresh, correct, and reliable.
- The analytics team invested in data observability after several reports used stale data.
- Data observability tools can alert engineers when a pipeline stops updating.
- Good data observability makes it easier to trace a bad number back to its source.
end-to-end observability
1visibility across a whole system
End-to-end observability lets engineers follow what happens from the start of a process to the end.
- The company wanted end-to-end observability across its checkout flow.
- Distributed tracing gave the team end-to-end observability for every user request.
- End-to-end observability is difficult when services are owned by different teams.
full-stack observability
1visibility across technology layers
Full-stack observability helps engineers see problems in every layer of a system.
- The operations team adopted a full-stack observability platform.
- Full-stack observability helped them connect slow page loads to a database issue.
- Many cloud vendors advertise full-stack observability for complex enterprise systems.
observability pipeline
1telemetry processing flow
An observability pipeline moves and processes logs, metrics, and traces before they are stored or analyzed.
- They built an observability pipeline to reduce the cost of storing high-volume logs.
- The observability pipeline routes security events to a separate system.
- A broken observability pipeline can leave engineers blind during an incident.
observability platform
1software for system telemetry
An observability platform is software that helps teams see and understand what their systems are doing.
- They moved their logs and metrics into a single observability platform.
- An observability platform can alert teams when latency suddenly increases.
- The startup sells an observability platform for Kubernetes applications.
observability tools
1tools for diagnosing systems
Observability tools help engineers understand system behavior and find problems.
- The team compared several observability tools before choosing one.
- Modern observability tools often combine logs, metrics, traces, and dashboards.
- Good observability tools reduce the time needed to investigate incidents.
three pillars of observability
1logs metrics and traces
The three pillars of observability are logs, metrics, and traces.
- The training session introduced the three pillars of observability: logs, metrics, and traces.
- Many engineers now argue that the three pillars of observability are useful but incomplete.
- Their dashboard strategy was built around the three pillars of observability.