Observability Platform – infrastructure monitoring and management, done right
In tech-driven business areas these days, staying ahead of the competition requires not only innovation but also a deep understanding of your systems and applications. In this blog post, we will explore how an observability platform prevents issues, improves efficiency and saves time for your tech teams.
Often, the way software and infrastructure are built in organisations is not great in terms of providing clear visibility of the system. Any mature tech organisation benefits from all the teams and products in the company using the same observability tooling – it enables a shared understanding of the organisation’s services as a whole. That’s where the concept of the Observability Platform comes into play.
Observability platform?
So, what is an observability platform? In this context, an observability platform is a unified system that collects and analyzes metrics and telemetry data across an organization's infrastructure and applications. It provides a central hub for monitoring and understanding how different components of your system perform and interact. Observability is essential for modern tech organisations: a comprehensive overview of infrastructure and applications is a prerequisite for detecting problems early and making informed decisions when managing your infra.
This platform promotes consistency by encouraging all teams and products within an organization to utilize the same observability tooling. By doing so, teams send their metrics to a common storage, use shared data sources for creating dashboards, and set up alerts.
“Tech moves at a stunning pace, but infrastructure and observability have fallen behind. The business implications are massive, as a lack of observability means a lack of information, wasted man-hours, and needless infrastructure and tooling. Without observability, keeping your infrastructure cost-efficient and lean is impossible. The observability platform is essentially our proposition for bringing observability up to speed”, states Erno Aapa, COO of Polar Squad.
Today, we have multiple open-source options to start building such a platform. Prometheus can be used to collect and store metrics. VictoriaMetrics can store Prometheus metrics in the long term and for centralisation. Grafana can be used to visualize the metrics. These components can be run in a Kubernetes cluster to benefit from stateless workloads and modern development practices.
Plan carefully to reap the benefits
To truly unlock the value of an observability platform, you need to achieve buy-in from the teams and people about to use it. The platform must be built to carefully serve the needs of your developer teams. A properly built observability platform goes beyond memory or CPU usage insights, providing a close view of the application and service.
When the platform caters to your organization’s individual needs and your people understand the benefits and are willing to adopt it as part of their daily work, the work will quickly start paying dividends.
The Business Benefits of an Observability Platform
Streamlined Operations: One of the most significant advantages of an observability platform is the streamlining of operations. With a unified system for metrics and telemetry data, you eliminate the need for individual teams to maintain their observability tools. This centralization reduces redundancy, minimizes overhead, and ensures that all data is consistently stored and accessible.
Enhanced Collaboration: A shared observability platform promotes collaboration among teams. Instead of siloed monitoring solutions, everyone works with the same tools and data sources, facilitating knowledge sharing and cross-functional cooperation. This fosters a culture of transparency and collective problem-solving.
Improved Troubleshooting: When an issue arises, having a unified observability platform with metrics at your fingertips allows for faster and more effective troubleshooting. Teams can easily access historical data, track changes, and identify root causes, reducing downtime and operational disruptions.
Efficient Resource Management: By aggregating metrics from all infrastructure components and applications into a single storage, you gain a holistic view of your system's health and performance. This enables more efficient resource allocation and capacity planning, preventing over-provisioning or underutilization.
Robust Alerting and Automation: The observability platform allows you to set up alerts based on predefined thresholds or custom conditions. By automating responses to anomalies, you ensure that problems are addressed promptly.
Scalability and Multi-Region Support: As your business grows, the observability platform can scale with you. It’s possible to support multiple Kubernetes clusters across different regions, making the platform adaptable to evolving infrastructures. This flexibility is crucial for businesses with global operations.
Insightful Dashboards: Grafana, integrated with the platform, empowers users to create insightful dashboards that aggregate data from various sources. This enables teams to visualize and understand system performance in real-time, leading to data-driven decisions.
Application Metrics: With Prometheus, you can effortlessly collect and monitor application-specific metrics, allowing you to gain insights into user experiences and application performance.
If you want to make your infra more efficient with a single observability solution, we’re here to help. Contact us.
If you’re looking for more information about how observability platforms are built from a technical standpoint, have a look at our 9-part series, ‘Prometheus Observability Platform.’
Aleksi Waldén
DevOps Consultant
If you want to get going with better networking, get in touch!