Frontend observability (or real user monitoring) is a critical, yet often overlooked, part of systems monitoring. Website and mobile app frontends are just as complex, if not more so, than the backend systems observability teams typically prioritize. They also represent the first interaction users have with our applications — so it’s important to have full visibility into that experience.

On the surface, business-critical IT infrastructure and cats may not seem like they have a lot in common. But they’re way more alike than you might think. Our feline friends contain multitudes, as any cat parent will tell you. They’re complex and can sometimes drive you up a wall. But once they warm up to you—and you warm up to them—the joys and benefits of having them in your life outweigh just about everything. Sounds a lot like technology, right?

To help simplify instrumenting Spring Boot applications with Grafana Cloud, we are excited to introduce the Grafana OpenTelemetry Starter, a project that connects the latest Micrometer enhancements from Spring Boot 3 with Grafana Cloud using OpenTelemetry. By using these tools, you will have logs, metrics, and traces in a single service — in the same easy way that you can use Prometheus with Spring Boot.

The OpenTelemetry Collector is a useful application to have in your stack. However, deploying it has always felt a little time consuming: working out how to host the config, building the deployments, etc. The good news is the OpenTelemetry team also produces Helm charts for the Collector, and I’ve started leveraging them. There are a few things to think about when using them though, so I thought I’d go through them here.

Observability and monitoring: These terms are often used interchangeably, but they represent different approaches to understanding and managing IT infrastructure. If you are new to these terms or are often confused between the two, this blog is for you! In this blog, we'll explore the key concepts of observability and monitoring, their evolution in IT operations, their differences and similarities, and their importance in modern infrastructure.

On July 25th, 2023, we experienced a total Honeycomb outage. It impacted all user-facing components from 1:40 p.m. UTC to 2:48 p.m. UTC, during which no data could be processed or accessed. This outage is the most severe we’ve had since we had paying customers. In this review, we will cover the incident itself, and then we’ll zoom back out for an analysis of multiple contributing elements, our response, and the aftermath.

What do mall food courts and Honeycomb have in common? We both love sampling! Not only do we recommend it to many of our customers, we do it ourselves. But once Refinery (our tail-based sampling proxy) is set up, what comes next? Since sampling is inherently lossy, it’s good to be sure the organization’s most important measurements aren’t negatively affected.

For nearly a decade, Logz.io has offered a proven pathway for organizations using the world’s most popular open source tools to monitor and analyze their cloud systems—allowing them to enlist a far more efficient and cost-effective approach.

Observability architecture and design is becoming more important than ever among all types of IT teams. That’s because core elements in observability architecture are pivotal in ensuring complex software systems’ smooth functioning, reliability and resilience. And observability design can help you achieve operational excellence and deliver exceptional user experiences. In this article, we’ll delve into the vital role of observability design and architecture in IT environments.