Learning: Observability

Table of Contents Introduction Get Started Logs Canonical logs Traces Metrics General Best Practices Resources GitHub demo repo Conclusion Introduction In this small post, I'll share some resources, notes I've taken while learning, and best practices for making our systems observable. I've always had a knowledge gap regarding observability, and recently I've truly enjoyed learning more about this area in our software industry. Quick note: In this post I'll only share about 3 telemetry signals. Profile is another signal that I will research in the future. Get Started Follow these steps to get started with auto-instrumentation in your application using OpenTelemetry: https://opentelemetry.io/docs/languages/net/getting-started/#instrumentation For OpenTelemetry in a front-end app you can check these useful resources: Grafana faro Next.js Guide for OpenTelemetry in Next.js Browser OpenTelemetry getting started Client-side instrumentation in OpenTelemetry is part of their roadmap which is great to see, since I've only seen vendor-specific solutions and products for front-end apps (e.g. New Relic, Datadog). For browser instrumentation otel doesn't seem to be super mature yet, but a lot of effort is being put into this area by the OpenTelemetry team. Logs We all know about logs

Mar 30, 2025 - 10:28

Introduction
Get Started
Logs
- Canonical logs
Traces
Metrics
General Best Practices
Resources
- GitHub demo repo
Conclusion

Introduction

In this small post, I'll share some resources, notes I've taken while learning, and best practices for making our systems observable. I've always had a knowledge gap regarding observability, and recently I've truly enjoyed learning more about this area in our software industry.

Quick note: In this post I'll only share about 3 telemetry signals. Profile is another signal that I will research in the future.

Get Started

Follow these steps to get started with auto-instrumentation in your application using OpenTelemetry: https://opentelemetry.io/docs/languages/net/getting-started/#instrumentation

For OpenTelemetry in a front-end app you can check these useful resources:

Client-side instrumentation in OpenTelemetry is part of their roadmap which is great to see, since I've only seen vendor-specific solutions and products for front-end apps (e.g. New Relic, Datadog). For browser instrumentation otel doesn't seem to be super mature yet, but a lot of effort is being put into this area by the OpenTelemetry team.

Logs

We all know about logs