Observability
Ability to understand internal system state through external outputs.
Definition
Observability is the ability to understand a system's internal state by examining its external outputs—logs, metrics, and traces. Unlike traditional monitoring that checks known failure modes, observability enables investigation of unknown problems by providing comprehensive visibility into system behavior.
Modern observability platforms unify logs, metrics, and traces to help teams quickly diagnose issues in complex distributed systems. This capability has become essential as architectures grow more complex and traditional debugging approaches fail.
Why It Matters
Complex modern systems fail in unpredictable ways. Observability provides the visibility needed to debug problems quickly rather than flying blind when things go wrong.
For engineering teams, investing in observability dramatically reduces mean time to resolution and improves system reliability.
Examples in Practice
An observability platform correlates a performance regression to a specific code change by tracing requests through dozens of services.
On-call engineers use observability dashboards to diagnose a sudden error spike, identifying the root cause in minutes rather than hours.
A company discovers a subtle bug that only affects certain user segments by analyzing observability data patterns.