The Ultimate Guide to

Observability
Table of Contents
 PHP

JAVA

.NET
C++

node.js HTML

In this eBook, we’ll take a big-picture look at observability. First, you’ll learn about the history,
objectives, and benefits of observability as well as the challenges it poses for organizations. Then
you’ll be introduced to a theoretical framework for data observability, typical business use cases as
well as the three pillars of observability. You’ll also understand the important distinctions between
observability and monitoring and how observability contributes to the work of development and IT
operations (DevOps) teams. Finally, we’ll present best practices for implementing observability, the
elements of a good observability tool, and how to choose the right one for your organization.

3
01
What is Observability?
Observability is defined as a measure of how well internal states of a system can be inferred from knowledge
of its external outputs. When used in the IT context and with reference to the work of software development
(Dev) and IT operations (Ops) teams, the term observability describes the ability to understand and manage
the performance of all the systems, servers, applications, and other resources constituting an enterprise
technology stack.

‍ bservability is achieved via a combination of observability tools and methodologies—the observability

O
platform—adopted specifically to enable DevOps teams to discover, triage, and resolve systems issues that
threaten uptime and reliability and undermine the achievement of enterprise goals.

More simply, observability is distinct from monitoring, which passively tracks predefined metrics in
discrete systems. Instead, observability makes actionable use of data by enabling a holistic view across the
entirety of a technology stack. And it aggregates all the data produced by all the IT systems to produce
real-time insights, identify anomalies, determine their root cause, and proactively resolve them.

02
History of Observability
The term “observability” was first coined in the 1960s by Rudolf Emil Kálmán, a Hungarian-American electrical
engineer, mathematician, and inventor, to describe how well a system can be measured by its outputs.

Kálmán’s work on the mathematical study of systems led to his co-invention of the Kalman filter. This is a
mathematical technique widely used in the digital computers of control systems, navigation systems, avionics,
and outer-space vehicles to extract a signal from a long sequence of noisy or incomplete measurements.

Although it was in routine use amongst engineers working in process and aerospace industries, the term
observability did not enter the lexicon of IT practitioners until some 30 years afterwards.

One of its first appearances was in a blog post published in 2013, where engineers at Twitter described the
“observability stack” they’d created to monitor the health and performance of the “diverse service topology”
that resulted after their move from a monolithic to a distributed IT architecture.

The move meant a dramatic escalation in the overall complexity of their systems and the interaction between
those systems. They called their observability solution “an important driver for quickly determining the root
cause of issues, as well as increasing Twitter’s overall reliability and efficiency.”

4
Current Trends
Almost 20 years later, in line with the routine adoption of complex, multilayered, cloud-based infrastructures
using microservices and containers, the concept of observability in enterprise IT has become mainstream.

The role of the COVID-19 pandemic in spurring an already galloping trend cannot be underestimated. Synergy
Research Group reported in December 2020 that as enterprises rushed to enable remote working for
employees and digital engagement with customers, spending on cloud infrastructure services (IaaS, PaaS,

and hosted private cloud services) and SaaS reached $65 billion in the third quarter, up 28% from the third
quarter of 2019.

According to the Enterprise Strategy Group’s State of Observability 2021 survey, global IT leaders are convinced
of the value of observability. A full 90% of survey participants said they expected it to become the most
important pillar of enterprise IT.

03
What are the Objectives of Observability?
From the perspective of enterprise software development and IT operations (DevOps) and site reliability
engineering (SRE) teams, the overall objective of observability is to ensure that the enterprise IT stack is
available and that it’s performing reliably.

Business Success
System availability and performance are not stand-alone goals. They underpin business success in the sense
that non-availability and underperformance negatively affect user experience and customer satisfaction. In
extreme cases, they could lead to reputational damage, revenue loss, and even business failure.

As reported in the findings from the State of Observability 2021 report:

53% 45% 30%

of respondents said app reported lower customer reported losing customers
issues had resulted in satisfaction as a result of as a consequence.
customer or revenue loss. service failures.

In a comple , multilayered, distributed computing environment with so many interdependencies that

x

they’re impossible to keep track of, the promise of full stack observability is that it enables organi ations to
- z

nd the proverbial needle in the haystack that is, to identify and respond to systems issues before they
fi —

affect customers.

5
Security and Compliance
Observability also plays a role in ensuring enterprises comply with their legal obligation to protect sensitive data
from unauthorized access. From a security perspective, observability tools can be used to detect breaches and
intrusions and prevent data leaks. A useful business by-product of observability is the opportunity to avoid or
reduce the fines levied by governments and regulatory bodies for non-compliance.

Marketing
As well as improving the user experience and boosting brand reputation, observability practices can contribute
to revenue growth and profitability, for example, by providing analytical data about customer behavior that
helps marketers make strategic decisions.

04
Benefits of Observability
The key benefit of observability is that it can provide multiple stakeholders with actionable insights into the
complex, multilayered, distributed IT infrastructure that’s become a feature of the modern enterprise. As data
volumes increase, the complexity will also increase.

DevOps and SRE Teams

For DevOps and SRE teams, end-to-end data visibility and monitoring across multi-layered IT architecture
simplifies root cause analysis. This means they can quickly identify and resolve issues no matter where they
originate or at what point in the software lifecycle they emerge.

As well as being able to identify issues in real-time, teams can also automate parts of the triage process. That
allows them to instantly resolve even unanticipated problems and saves both time and money
According to the State of Observability 2021 report, amongst owners of hybrid, multi-cloud infrastructures,
mature observability users are 2.9 times more likely to report improved visibility into application
performance. In the case of public cloud infrastructure, visibility is improved two-fold

High maturity observability practices are also correlated with speedier root cause identification. This results
in quicker fixes for complex, service-crashing crises—which might be averted altogether.

Security and Compliance

With full visibility into the enterprise IT stack, teams can be alerted to and proactively nip security incidents in
the bud. These could include data breaches or outright attacks that threaten data integrity and increase the risk
of non-compliance with data privacy regulations—as well as the associated costs.

6
Enterprise Success 06
Findings from the State of Observability 2021 report show a The Observability
strong correlation between observability and business success.
As well as being 4.5 times more likely to report successful digital Framework
transformation initiatives, organizations with the most
advanced observability practices also report 60% more new Guidelines f rom the Google Cloud

services, products, and revenue streams than organizations with Architecture Center list the capabil-


rudimentary observability. ities to be built into the design of an

observability solution as follows:

05
Challenges of Observability Reporting on the overall health
of systems: are systems func-

tioning and are sufficient
A recent poll amongst more than 200 senior engineering
resources available?

professionals responsible for observability and log data

management at companies across the United States revealed
that 74% of companies are struggling to achieve true Reporting on system state as
experienced by customers: if a
observability.

system is down, are customers

Complaints cited by survey participants include their inability
 aware of it and is their
experience negatively affected?

to find tools to support multiple use cases. Typically, multiple

teams need to extract actionable insights from the same
data—including development, IT operations, site reliability Monitoring for key business and
engineering, and security. A total of 67% of respondents systems metrics

reported barriers to collaboration across teams while 58%

experienced difficulties with routing security events.
Explicitly documented Service
Level Objectives with defined
Cost is also an issue. In an attempt to control the costs values indicating success or
associated with managing increased volumes of machine data, failure

companies limit the amount of log data ingested or stored. But

as a result, instead of having the full information needed to Tooling to help understand and
troubleshoot a problem, developers have only sample debug systems in production

data—and it’s insufficient. This slows down troubleshooting,

debugging, and incident response efforts, and increases
Tooling to identify unantici-

security risk.

pated problems, typically

referred to in observability
As well as untenable storage costs that limit scalability,
circles as “unknown unknowns”

companies also struggle with data variety. Given that most

organizations maintain an average of 400 data sources
including computers, smartphones, websites, social media Access to tools and data that
networks, e-commerce platforms, and IoT devices, it’s not help trace, understand, and
diagnose infrastructure prob-

surprising that 32% of survey respondents reported difficulties
lems in the production
with ingesting data into a standard format and 30% with environment, including
routing it into multiple tools for different use cases.
interactions between services
More than half of the respondents said they’d like to replace

the tools they’re currently using.

7
07
Examples of Observability
The large-scale adoption of cloud native services, including microservice, container, and serverless technologies
over the last decade, has burdened organizations with vast, geographically distributed spiderwebs of
interdependent systems. Tracking and monitoring the complex interrelationships between these systems to
identify and fix outages and other problems is beyond the capabilities of traditional monitoring tools.

Observability fulfills this function by giving DevOps teams visibility across complex, multilayered architectures,
so they can identify the links in a process and quickly and efficiently locate the cause of a problem.

Twitter
Twitter’s adoption of observability to gain visibility into hundreds of services
across multiple data centers is extensively documented in this blog post.

Stripe
Another popular example is payment provider Stripe’s use of distributed tracing

to find the causes of failures and latency within networked services—of which as
many as 10 could be involved in the processing of a single one of the millions of
payments the company manages daily.

With its payments platform a natural target for payments fraud and cybercrime,
Stripe also developed early fraud detection capabilities, which use machine
learning models based on similarity information to identify potential bad actors.

Uber and Facebook

Like Stripe, Uber and Facebook also make use of large-scale distributed tracing
systems. While Uber’s system, Jaeger, serves mainly to provide engineers with
insights into failures in their microservices architecture by automating root
cause analysis, Facebook uses distributed tracing to gain detailed information
about its web and mobile apps. Datasets are aggregated in Facebook’s Canopy
system, which also includes a built-in trace-processing system.

Network Monitoring
Network monitoring is a further example of observability in practice, and it’s used
to help pinpoint the reason for performance failures—which might otherwise have
been wrongly blamed on an application or other teams.

By accurately identifying network-related incidents, network monitoring software

may reveal that a particular problem originates at the ISP or third-party platform
level. The result is an easing of internal tensions as well as a speedy resolution of
the problem at hand.

8
08
The Three Pillars of Observability
Metrics, logs, and traces are the three data inputs, which together provide DevOps and SRE teams with a
holistic view into distributed systems in cloud and microservices environments. Also called the Golden Triangle
of Observability in Monitoring, these three pillars underpin the observability architecture that enables IT
personnel to identify and diagnose outages and other systems problems regardless of where the servers are.

Traces Metrics Logs

T‍ races enable DevOps admins to
locate the source of an alert. This is
because they account for a series of
distributed events and what
happens between them. Tracking
system dependencies in this way
mean traces can show precisely
aggregation and analysis.
‍ bservability metrics include key
O ‍ bservability logs answer the “who,
O
performance indicators (KPIs) such as what, where, when, and how”
response time, peak load, requests questions regarding access activities.
served, CPU capacity, memory usage, Because microservers typically use
error rates, and latency. These KPIs: different data formats, log data must
be structured—which complicates
Quantify performance

where slow spots are occurring.

E amples of bottleneck traces
x
Produce alerts such as when While logs provide unmatched levels
include: a system is down or load of detail, their sheer volume makes
balancers reach capacity
them challenging to index and
P Querie expensive to manage. Many
A I s

Monitor events for organizations struggle to log every

S erver to erver
- -S W or loa
k d

anomalous activities single transaction, and even when

they do, logs cannot show
Internal P A I C all s

concurrency in microservices-heavy
F rontend P raf c
A I T fi
systems.

The three pillars contribute different views and don’t work well in isolation. Transforming the data each provides
into real insights requires harnessing their collective value in an analytics dashboard, which reflects the
relationships between the three elements and contextualizes the data in terms of measurable, objective-based
benchmarks.

For a full discussion of the three pillars of observability, read our dedicated blog post.

9
09
Observability and DevOps
The key task of DevOps teams is to ensure reliability, availability, and performance across the IT infrastructure
for which they’re responsible. Observability solutions enable DevOps teams to proactively detect anomalies,
analyze issues, and resolve problems by garnering real-time insights into the health and status of the full range
of systems, servers, applications, and resources.

Observability is enabled by an observability platform and by observability tools. The outputs allow DevOps
teams to understand not only whether each system is working but also why it’s not working.

In combination, observability tools:

monitor the health and status of the systems using metrics, logs, and traces

detect and report anomalies

provide the data required to quickly troubleshoot and solve issues

PLA LEASE
DE N RE
O

D
C

EP
LOY
B U IL

TE
D

M
RA

ON E
TEST
IT O
R OP

Observability Across the Software Lifecycle

Beyond its use in the production environment, observability is gaining recognition within the DevOps
community as critical to the software lifecycle as a whole. This is confirmed by the findings from the State of
Observability 2021 survey where 91% of the decision makers polled see observability as critical to every stage of
the software lifecycle. They place especially high importance on planning and operations.

Observability benefits identified by this group include:

cost-effectiveness
improved user experiences

improved development speed, quality, and agility better engineer morale

10
10

Observability vs Monitoring vs Telemetry vs Visibility

Observability vs Monitoring

Observability and monitoring are often spoken of together in reference to IT software development and
operations (DevOps) strategies. While both play an important role in ensuring the safety of systems, data, and
security perimeters, observability and monitoring are complementary, but not interchangeable, capabilities.

The essential difference between the two lies in the fact that monitoring tools reveal performance issues or
anomalies a DevOps team can anticipate while observability infrastructure takes care of multifaceted, often
unanticipated issues such as those arising from the interplay between complex, cloud-native applications in
distributed technology environments.

Monitoring collects and analyzes predetermined data pulled f rom individual systems.

Observability aggregates all data produced by all IT systems.

As such, monitoring is static and one-dimensional because monitoring tools track expected events in specified
applications and systems. Observability on the other hand is contextual, proactive, and dynamic. It takes
account of the interactions between multiple—possibly even hundreds of—systems at once and explores
properties and patterns not defined in advance.

While monitoring alerts a DevOps team to a potential known issue, observability helps the team detect and
solve the root cause of a previously unknown issue. This is because even when a particular endpoint isn’t
directly observable, the information which comes from monitoring its performance can be used with the help
of observability tools (metrics, logs, and traces) not only to identify an issue in real-time, but also to automate
parts of the triage process so that issues can be instantly detected across the system as a whole.

For a full discussion of observability vs. monitoring, read our dedicated blog post.

Observability vs Telemetry

Telemetry, or more specifically telemetry data, facilitates and enables observability.

Derived f rom the Greek roots tele ("remote") and metron ("measure”), telemetry is the process by which data
is gathered f rom across disparate systems to paint a picture of the internal state of the larger system that
contains them.

In the case of the human body, for example, telemetry data such as blood pressure, temperature, and heart rate
provides a window through which its internal state can be observed. For complex enterprises, the telemetry
data measures performance across each element of the technology inf rastructure f rom servers to applications
and includes user analytics as an indicator of system health.

11
 In the IT context, there are three types of telemetry:

Metrics
Logs
Traces

Indicate there is a problem Provide the forensic detail which Identify the source of the
reveals the root cause of the problem problem

Telemetry tools also standardize the data collected so it can be usefully analyzed by DevOps teams. This is vital
in complex, cloud-native environments where data comes from a variety of sources and is of different types:
structured, semi-structured, and unstructured.

While telemetry tools offer robust data collection and standardization, they do not independently provide the
deep insight DevOps teams need to quickly understand why an issue is occurring so it can be effectively
resolved. Effective observability depends on all three types simultaneously.

Observability vs Visibility
A key advantage of observability is that it enables organizations to discover the root cause of systems problems
and then resolve them— saving time or money for the organization, improving the customer experience,
preserving profitability, and loosening production bottlenecks.

Root cause analysis and problem resolution are possible because observability solutions take account of an IT
infrastructure in its entirety. That means DevOps teams have end-to-end visibility of data as it moves around
even the most complex, multi-layered IT architectures and interacts with different tools and systems. That
visibility enables them to quickly identify data issues no matter where they originate. In turn, the faster mean
time to detection (MTTD) leads to a faster mean time to resolution (MTTR).

MTTD is a key performance indicator in incident management and indicates the average amount of time
required for an organization to discover an incident. Logically, the sooner an incident is identified, the sooner it
can be remediated. MTTR is also an important performance indicator in incident management and denotes the
average time taken to resolve a problem and restore a system to functionality.

Visibility on its own does not equate with observability. The distinction is that observability provides a holistic
context for individual instances of visibility into discrete systems.

12
11
How to Implement Observability

Best Practices

Introducing observability into an organization is a major step which involves a succession of conscious
decisions and collaborative actions and cannot happen by chance. Rather, it must be founded on an agreed
commitment at all levels of the enterprise to foster data-driven decision making and promote strong data
quality as well as consistency and reliability.

The first step in setting up observability is to designate a dedicated observability team whose task is to take
ownership of observability in the organization, think through the approach, and design an observability
strategy. The strategy should list and take into account the specific goals of the enterprise in adopting
observability. It should also define and document the most important use cases for observability across the
organization.

From an understanding of business priorities, the key observability statistics can be established and decisions
made about the data—that is the metrics, traces, and logs—that will be needed from across the enterprise
technology stack to produce those measurements.

The next step is to document data formats, data structures, and metadata, the latter group to ensure
interoperability between the different types of data that will be collected. This is particularly important in

large organizations with multiple teams where the tendency is to work in separate silos, each with its own
terminology, dashboards, and reports.

Having a documented observability infrastructure in place encourages collaboration across divisions and
sets the scene for the next steps: defining an observability pipeline and creating a centralized observability
platform for data ingestion and routing to analytical tools or

temporary storage.

Education sits at the center of the fundamental building blocks of an observability framework. As well as
cultivating an observability culture, regular bootcamps for both existing and new staff will create
understanding and engagement and ensure positive and informed action and the achievement of peak
observability.

13
12
How to Choose a Good Observability Tool?
Creating the elements of a good data observability tool include the following:

Collates, reviews, samples, and processes telemetry data across multiple data sources. Offers compre-

hensive monitoring across the network, infrastructure, servers, databases, cloud applications, and storage

Serves as a centralized repository to support data retention and fast access to data

Provides data visualization

Automates data security, governance, and operations practices

From a storage perspective, offers long retention periods and fast retrieval for auditing

Supports reasonable levels of growth in data volumes

Monitors data at rest from its current source—without the need to extract it—and in motion through its
entire lifecycle

Incorporates embedded AIOps and intelligence alongside data visualization and analytics

Requires the minimum possible upfront work to standardize and map data

Requires the minimum possible adjustments to existing data pipelines

As well as possessing these characteristics, the right observability tool will be an appropriate fit with an
organization’s existing architecture, integrating smoothly with each data source and with existing tools and
workflows. It will also be easy to use, incorporating clear visualizations that facilitate issue review and
troubleshooting by staffers.

Education sits at the center of the fundamental building blocks of an observability framework. As well as
cultivating an observability culture, regular bootcamps for both existing and new staff will create under-

standing and engagement and ensure positive and informed action and the achievement of peak observability.

The key elements of best practices in observability implementation are listed below.

Assemble an observability team

Establish key observability metrics based on business priorities

Build an observability pipeline based on OpenTelemetry to standardize metrics, logs, and traces across
the organization

Formulate and document common practices for data management, security, and governance

Centralize and correlate data sources

Select analytics tools

Educate teams to empower proficiency in all development teams and promote a culture of observability

14
13
Transform Your Organization’s Monitoring Capabilities
with Data Observability
As observability is an emerging technology. As the trend towards distributed enterprise IT infrastructures
continues to gather pace, observability will continue to evolve and improve, supporting more data sources,
automating more capabilities, and helping to shore up enterprise defenses against cybercrime, crippling
outages, and running afoul of privacy regulations. Where observability may once have been thought of as a
nice-to-have, it has become a fundamental necessity for business success.

StrongDM seamlessly integrates with many data observability tools to expand your visibility into user access.

Learn how our Infrastructure Access Platform can help you understand the ways your customers access and
use your data!

Book a free, no-BS demo.

14
More Observability Resources
How to View SSH Logs OK, but what is Data Observability

Embracing the New Mindset of Cloud-Native What are the Three Pillars of Observability
Securit
Understanding the Difference Between
Audit Log Review and Management Best Observability and Monitoring
Practices

15
StrongDM’s infrastructure access platform gives every business secure access controls in a
way folks love to use. Trusted by the Fortune 500 to fast-growing businesses like Peloton,
SoFi, Chime, Yext, and Better, StrongDM gives businesses the control and visibility they
need at the speed they want with one platform that works for every environment.
StrongDM is intentionally distributed. Head to www.StrongDM.com to learn more.