Learn why observability is key for managing system health and behavior, and discover ways to optimize observability outcomes.
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Observability is the way organizations monitor the health and behavior of their own systems. They might monitor operations, IT, and security systems while tracking key performance indicators (KPIs). By analyzing logs, traces, and other external metrics, teams can better understand their systems’ internal state and how those systems are directly affecting uptime, efficiency, and profitability.
More than simple monitoring or visibility, observability connects systems and their performance to the overall health and stability of the organization. It helps teams correlate how the organization’s internal processes directly affect its strategic outcomes.
Observability draws on metrics, traces, and logs along with other pertinent business and user data. Together, this information provides unprecedented insight into the functionality of the entire organization.
Organizations take collected data and correlate it to their existing systems’ processes and procedures. This correlation can help them understand how the organization is working as a whole and where the pain points and bottlenecks are. More importantly, the correlation can shine a light on how and where processes can be improved. Observability turns raw data with IT operations into usable insights and intelligence to improve the overall health of the organization.
Strong observability provides a surprising number of benefits to the organization, including:
Cloud observability brings the benefits of general observability — including metrics, logs, traces, and other user and business observability — to complex cloud systems, applications, and infrastructure. As more and more organizations conduct their business in the cloud, observability and cloud observability move closer together, and become harder to pick apart.
Monitoring is a subset of observability. Observability goes beyond simply monitoring a system or a group of systems. It includes investigating issues and understanding the underlying “hows” and “whys” behind systems, and where they’re working — and failing. It highlights how departments like IT and their workflows are directly benefiting or harming the organization, and where improvements can be made. Unlike standard monitoring, observability provides a more flexible, cross-departmental, holistic approach to not only understanding, but improving the business.
Some of the most common observability use cases include:
As with any other business goal, there are best practices you can implement for your ideal observability outcomes.
Start with an in-depth inventory of all of your digital assets. Then spend the time to figure out the critical metrics you need to track, and set baselines, goals, and thresholds.
Next, look for observability solutions that can seamlessly integrate with your existing tech stack while automating your monitoring and anomaly reporting. Make sure you also have the right systems in place to collect and appropriately store the data you’ll be producing.
In the push for improved observability, organizations can sometimes become so focused on the right solutions and technology improvements that they run the risk of not placing enough importance on optimizing communications across the organization. Seamless communication will help disparate teams iterate their collective results into more integrated and continuously streamlined response workflows and more efficient and agile business processes.
Even with the most powerful observability solution, you will likely need to integrate that solution with existing systems that haven’t been predesigned for unified observability. This usually means working with distributed workflows, data and expertise silos, aging systems and equipment, and other real-world data collection and storage compromises. Keep in mind that retrofitting existing systems to meet today’s observability needs can be costly and time-consuming.
Cloudflare’s Log Explorer can help you simplify implementation of end-to-end observability. You can save money on log storage, eliminate log ingestion latency, and trace and mitigate new issues as they come up. Lean on Cloudflare’s extensive experience to contain threats and resolve incidents as quickly as possible before they can escalate into major issues.
Learn how Cloudflare can help you simplify your log management and enhance your security posture.
Observability is how organizations monitor the health and behavior of their own systems, including IT, operations, and security. It involves tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and analyzing logs, traces, and other external metrics to better understand the systems' internal state and their effect on uptime, efficiency, and profitability. It connects system performance to the overall health of the organization.
Observability draws on metrics, logs, and traces, along with other pertinent business and user data.
Monitoring is a subset of observability. Observability goes beyond simple monitoring by including the investigation of issues and understanding the underlying "hows" and "whys" behind systems. Unlike standard monitoring, observability provides a more flexible, cross-departmental, and holistic approach to understanding and improving the business.
Strong observability provides several benefits, including: smarter, faster responses to issues; increased customer loyalty and satisfaction; fewer urgent IT issues; stronger business outcomes; and a better understanding of the organization’s information flow.
Common observability use cases include: more efficient and informed root cause analysis; application performance monitoring (APM); network and cloud monitoring and systems improvement; user experience and outcome analysis and improvement; DevOps and DevSecOps automation improvement; more accurate anomaly detection; improved data governance and compliance; and organizational cost optimization.
Best practices for observability include: defining clear goals for measuring success; integrating with systems early in their lifecycle; collecting data from across the organization; implementing solutions that minimize false positives; and adopting continuous improvement policies.
Even with powerful solutions, organizations may face challenges integrating with existing systems not predesigned for unified observability. Retrofitting existing systems can be costly and time-consuming.
Cloudflare's Log Explorer can help simplify the implementation of end-to-end observability. It allows you to trace and mitigate new issues, save money on log storage, and eliminate log ingestion latencies. Cloudflare's experience can be leveraged to quickly resolve incidents and contain threats before they escalate.
