Three Pillars, Zero Answers: We Need to Rethink Observability

Observability has never been more important: the complexity of microservices makes it harder and harder to answer basic questions about system behavior. The conventional wisdom claims that Metrics, Lo …

Observability has never been more important: the complexity of microservices makes it harder and harder to answer basic questions about system behavior. The conventional wisdom claims that Metrics, Logging and Tracing are “the three pillars” of observability… yet software organizations check these three boxes and are still grasping at straws during emergencies. In this session we’ll illustrate the problem with the three pillars: metrics, logs, and traces are just data – they are the fuel, not the car. We then reframe observability around two fundamental activities: (1) measurement and (2) explanation. “Measurement” must be both robust and precise; “explanation” must present the larger context of distributed transactions and the role that contention plays under peak load. We present both via demos and examples to ground the session in real-world storytelling.