Issue 201

I’m really excited about the collection of articles published this past week. We’ve got a really deep lineup of stories on logging, Kubernetes monitoring, and some excellent OpenTelemetry guides. I hope you enjoy these as much as I did! 😺☕🗻

This issue is sponsored by:

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Articles & News on monitoring.love

Observability & Monitoring Community Slack

Come hang out with all your fellow Monitoring Weekly readers. I mean, I’m also there, but I’m sure everyone else is way cooler.

From The Community

18 Kubernetes Metrics to Monitor for Optimal Cluster Performance

I’ve seen my share of “k8s metrics to monitor” articles, but this might be the most thorough and concise list yet. You should read this if you interact with Kubernetes at all.

What are Structured Logs and Why do They Improve Performance?

There’s a good chance if you’re reading this newsletter you already recognize the benefits of structured logs over traditional log formats. For everyone else, this post sums up the benefits and makes a strong case for switching.

Observability strategies to not overload engineering teams – eBPF

Although most shops will be better served instrumenting their applications for observability, I love that eBPF gives us an alternative, unobtrusive means for collecting application telemetry.

OpenTelemetry Metrics Primer for Java Developers

A very detailed yet approachable look at how to add OpenTelemetry metrics to your Java applications. Although the examples are specifically written in Java, the article is very easy to follow and would probably be suitable for developers working with other languages.

Logging Best Practices: Proven Techniques for Services

Beyond just using structured logging (which we covered above), this post covers some additional best practices for anyone working with logs.

How to scale your collection pipeline with the OpenTelemetry Collector

Written by a Grafana Labs engineer and maintainer of the OpenTelemetry project, this guide covers a variety of scaling considerations and approaches for the OpenTelemetry collector. Great to see all of this consolidated into a single guide.

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I Have Good News And Bad News About Your Cloud Metrics

Maybe it’s just the manager in me, but I really enjoyed the “big picture” thinking in this article. Observability needs to go beyond just our infrastructure and applications, all the way into the way we support the business goals and overall success.

Better Performance and Security by Monitoring Logs, Metrics, and More

As I’ve discussed in the past, Observability needs to play a prominent role in any effective Security posture. This author does a good job explaining how monitoring principles enable not only observable systems, but more reliable and secure ones as well.

Monitor Kubernetes cluster performance with the Prometheus operator

Grafana Labs has added some new community guides covering some of the most popular open source observability tools in use today. This one walks the reader through monitoring Kubernetes with the Prometheus operator and Grafana.

Consider All Microservices Vulnerable — And Monitor Their Behavior

This article addresses the importance of “security-behavior monitoring” for Kubernetes cluster, with the Guard project held up as one tool to accomplish these goals.

Prometheus: How is the Remote Write API code Path different from the Scrape Code Path

A very unique deep dive into the internals of Prometheus’ scraper code and that of the remote write API. Although the author seemed to end the post prematurely, it’s still an interesting walk through the logic of a time-series collector.

Tools

keyval-dev/opentelemetry-go-instrumentation

“OpenTelemetry auto-instrumentation for Go applications”

knative-sandbox/security-guard

“Runtime security plug to protect user containers”

Events

CFP open for Monitorama PDX 2023

There are only a couple weeks left to submit talks for this year’s Monitorama PDX 2023 event. Get your proposal in before the Feb 3 deadline! 🤩

See you next week!

– Jason (@obfuscurity) Monitoring Weekly Editor