Monitoring & Observability
Metrics, distributed tracing, and structured logging formats.
11 topics in this category.
About this category
This section collects production-verified specifications, implementation standards, and operational guidelines for monitoring & observability. Each specification provides clear compliance levels (Required, Recommended, Optional, or Avoid) alongside concrete testing methods and platform considerations.
Topics
The three pillars of observability
RecommendedThe foundational data types - Metrics, Logs, and Traces - required to understand the internal state of a complex distributed system.
High-cardinality metrics
RecommendedUnderstanding the cost and performance impact of attaching highly unique labels, like user IDs, to time-series metrics data.
Distributed tracing and trace IDs
RequiredTracking a single request as it travels across multiple network boundaries and microservices using injected context headers.
Structured logging vs unstructured
RequiredThe shift from human-readable text logs to machine-parsable JSON logs to enable complex querying and automated alerting.
Log aggregation and indexing
RecommendedCentralizing logs from distributed ephemeral containers into a searchable, indexed database.
Alert fatigue and actionable alerting
RequiredDesigning alerts that require human intervention and eliminating noisy warnings that train developers to ignore paging systems.
Service Level Objectives (SLOs)
RequiredDefining numerical targets for system reliability that balance the need for feature velocity against the risk of user-facing outages.
The four golden signals
RequiredThe essential metrics - Latency, Traffic, Errors, and Saturation - that provide a complete picture of a service's health.
OpenTelemetry specification
RequiredA vendor-neutral standard for generating, collecting, and exporting telemetry data across modern distributed systems.
Prometheus exposition format
RequiredThe open, text-based standard for exposing dimensional metric data over HTTP so that monitoring systems can scrape and index it.
Health Check Response Format (RFC)
RequiredThe IETF standard (RFC 9474) defining a consistent, machine-readable JSON schema for APIs and microservices to report their health status to orchestrators.