In a rapidly changing technology landscape, it is essential for organizations to understand what is really going on within their systems. This is where Observability comes into play. In this blog we delve deeper into the concept of Observability and how Elastic's solutions play an important role for organizations to not only monitor systems, but to really understand what is happening in their systems.

What is Observability?

Observability means that you can see externally what is happening internally in a system. For example, if you're managing a complex web application and you suddenly notice a slowdown in response times, you can use Observability to see where the problem is occurring. By looking at logs, measuring CPU usage, and tracking transactions, you can quickly identify which parts of the application are causing the slowdown and why. This allows you to respond quickly and solve the problem effectively.

Observability therefore goes beyond just monitoring, by looking not only at the health of the system, but also at its performance and behavior. Essentially it's about asking questions like “What's going on?” and “Why is this happening?” You then collect the necessary information to answer these questions.

The three pillars of Observability

To achieve Observability, organizations must focus on three key aspects:

1. Logs: collecting and analyzing log data from various parts of a system. Logs contain valuable information about events, errors and other relevant activities.
2. Metrics: quantitative data about a system's performance, such as CPU usage, memory consumption, and network throughput. This data is essential to identify trends and diagnose problems.
3. Traces: that track the paths of individual transactions or requests through a distributed system. They help in understanding the performance and interdependencies of different components.

Elastics Observability Suite

Elastic offers a comprehensive suite of tools to help organizations achieve Observability in their systems:

• Elasticsearch: A powerful search and analytics engine, Elasticsearch makes it easy to index, store, and search massive amounts of log and metrics data.
• Kibana: Kibana provides an intuitive user interface for visualizing and analyzing data stored in Elasticsearch. It allows users to build dashboards, run complex queries and discover trends.
• APM (Application Performance Monitoring): Elastic APM provides detailed insights into application performance by capturing and analyzing distributed traces. This helps identify bottlenecks and optimize application performance.

Conclusion

Observability is a crucial concept in modern IT management. Fortunately, Elastic offers powerful solutions to achieve this. By using Elasticsearch, Kibana and Elastic APM, organizations can gain deep insight into their systems. They can then proactively respond to any problems.

Do you need help with this? As an Elite Partner of Elastic, Puur Data is ready to support you in maximizing your Observability capabilities and achieving your goals. Please feel free Contact contact us for more information.