Understand what’s actually happening inside your systems.
Connecting metrics, logs, and traces so production behavior is visible, explainable, and actionable.
What is observability?
Observability is the ability to understand what’s happening inside a system by examining the data it produces externally — its metrics, logs, and traces. Where traditional monitoring tells you that something is wrong, observability is what lets engineers ask new questions of a system they didn’t anticipate needing to ask, and actually find the root cause.
This pillar covers the three core signal types, how application performance management (APM) and tracing connect them across distributed services, and how to turn all of it into faster root cause analysis during an incident.
Explore Observability.
A closer look at the topics that make up this pillar. Each one links out to a dedicated guide.
Metrics
Quantitative signals that describe system health and behavior over time.
TopicLogs
Structured and unstructured event records that explain what happened, and when.
TopicTracing
Following a single request across every service it touches.
TopicMonitoring
Watching systems continuously and alerting when signals cross thresholds.
TopicAPM
Application performance management — deep visibility into code-level behavior.
TopicProfiling
Sampling and instrumentation that reveal where resources are actually spent.
TopicRoot Cause Analysis
Working backward from a symptom to the actual source of a problem.
See inside your systems before they fail.
Connect metrics, logs, and traces into a single picture of production health.
