Tod Hansmann — Observability as an engineering enabler

Problem solver Tod Hansmann of Catalyst joins me to discuss "observability": What it is, why it means different things to different people, and how to get started if it's new for you.

In this episode:

• What is observability (o11y)?
• What can observability do for you?
• What metrics should you track?
• How does observability relate to logging, alerting, monitoring, and other practices?
• Who should be responsbile for obervability?
• How heavily should upper management be involved?
• How does observability relate to culture?
• CI/CD as a prerequisite for observability
• Why metrics are better than logs
• Surprising metrics that can be important
• The relationship between monitoring and automated testing
• Good observability as an enabler for canary deployments, test in production, and other practices
• How to define service level objectives
• How do you define "uptime"
• How to address corner cases
• Why being on call is desireable

Guest
Tod Hansmann
Twitter: @todpunk
LinkedIn: Tod Hansmann
Catalyst

Resources
Book: Site Reliability Engineering

Watch this episode on YouTube.