Observability is the ability to infer a system's state from output data. Or is it the sum of logs, metrics and traces? Well, both actually. The former is a qualitative and abstract expression, while the latter is more quantitative and specific.
Both are definitions people seem to subscribe to, according to the DevOps Pulse 2020 survey[1]. DevOps Pulse is an annual survey conducted by logz.io[2], a company active in the observability space. Similar to 2019, over 1000 people took the survey, which gives interesting insights on the state of DevOps[3].
Similar to 2019, we connected with a logz.io executive[4] to discuss the findings of the survey. Unlike 2019, DevOps Pulse 2020 was released towards the end of 2020, rather than the beginning of 2021. The main reason is that it's timed to coincide with a product announcement from logz.io, around the next stage in observability, and the main finding of the survey: tracing.
Obervability's maturity curve
ZDNet connected with Jonah Kowall, logz.io CTO, to discuss DevOps Pulse 2020, observability at large, and tracing in particular. Kowall, who is relatively new in logz.io, but experienced in the observability space, said what attracted him to logz.io was the dynamic of its open source offering.
As we have seen before, logz.io offers observability-related frameworks[5], such as Elastic / the ELK stack[6] and Grafana[7] as a service. It's a well-known pattern and offering: rather than taking the open source software and running it themselves, many organizations find that having a 3rd party do it for them makes sense.
When discussing "what do we talk about when we talk about observability", we noted about 1 in 3 survey respondents said it's "using logs, metrics