Observability vs Monitoring – what is the difference?

Observability is the new buzzword in technology circles, but what is it and how is it different to traditional Monitoring?

In this use case, we outline the concept of Observability and its benefits; plus provide a short overview on how Application Development, Infrastructure and Operations teams can move from a Monitoring to Observability framework.

Isn’t Observability just Monitoring with a new name?

In short – no! Monitoring makes up one part of an Observable system where several measures and controls are used to gain deep visibility of internal operations. Monitoring will alert you a system is failing; Observability will let you know why.

Your systems need to be Observable to Monitor them – meaning Monitoring can only be achieved once it is Observable.

To get a bit more technical – Observability refers to the ability to understand the state of your systems, infrastructure, and applications, using instrumentation, i.e.: measures and controls. Various instruments can be used to achieve Observability, but they fall into three main pillars:

• Logs – timestamped, immutable records of discrete events that can be used to identify unpredictable behaviour in a system and provide insight into what changed in the system’s behaviour when things went wrong.
• Monitoring/metrics – counts or measurements that are aggregated over a period. For example, metrics will tell you how much of the total amount of memory is used by a method, or how many requests a service handles per second.
• Traces – for an individual transaction or request, a single trace displays the operation as it moves from one node to another in a distributed system. Traces allow you to get into the details of certain requests to determine which components cause system errors, monitor flow through the modules, and find performance bottlenecks.

The outcome of using an Observability solution is a single consolidated view of the health of systems that can predict known problems before they occur. This allows teams to proactively respond to issues before the end user encounters a problem. Concurrently, it requires minimal operational overheads because it employs automation wherever possible.

If you are using Splunk you are already incorporating one or more of the pillars. However, to obtain the best possible ROI (return on investment) from Splunk Observability, all three pillars should be implemented. That is, all elements of your systems should be observed and then all the resulting data: logs, metrics and traces should be in one place where they can be correlated, and meaningful insights extracted.

The great part about moving from a Monitoring to Observability framework is it leverages many existing Splunk components and does not require Splunk Enterprise or Splunk Cloud.

What is so good about Observability?

Your teams have just got their heads around implementing Monitoring, and now you are told you need to reach Observability – is it worth your team’s time and money?

First, let’s review the top 5 tangible benefits you can expect from Observability:

1. Reduced costs by avoiding using multiple tools that do not communicate effectively with each other. Avoids the “swivel chair” approach of moving from one tool to another to achieve full visibility of your system.
2. Reduced Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) for incident response by having all the data in one place and using AI assisted analysis and automated incident response
3. Reduced time for Root Cause Analysis (RCA) for problems by having all the data in one place and using AI assisted analysis.
4. Unambiguous impact analysis through service mapping
5. A single consolidated view of the health of systems.

Second, let’s review the 3 top scenarios where you should use Observability. Ask yourself:

1. Does my organisation have several unconnected or legacy Monitoring systems?
2. Am I spending a lot on Monitoring but still see performance degradation and /or system unavailability?
3. Is my organisation facing an increasing threat landscape?

If you answered yes to any of these, and the above tangibles sound good, then Observability is worth considering.

I’m sold…but how do we go about achieving Observability?

We understand that change, particularly in complex organisations is hard. That’s why we recommend our clients first undertake a Discovery, Analysis and Report of your environment.

Delivering Observability requires an understanding of the organisation and the available software. Being technology agnostic, we can provide a solution that best suits you.

Splunk has a range of leading technologies to help you achieve Observability. For example, Splunk has built a set of fully integrated products to first gather data for each pillar and then bring them together, based on a unique set of foundational capabilities:

• Infrastructure Monitoring
• Application Performance Monitoring
• Digital Experience Monitoring
  • Real User Monitoring
  • Synthetic Monitoring
• Log investigation
• Incident Response

All of this is achieved without the need to sample data, providing real time insights, and is fully scalable as you grow. It leverages AI and Machine Learning to minimise operational overhead.

Avocado’s approach

Avocado has helped some of Australia’s largest organisations achieve Observability using Splunk. Below is our approach.

Step 1

Discovery, analysis, and report on your current environment and create a roadmap to a fully Observable system.

Step 2

Deploy and configure Splunk Observability tools:

• Splunk Application Performance Monitoring (APM)
• Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring (IM)
• Log Observer
• Real User Monitoring (RUM)
• Synthetic Monitoring

Step 3

Deploy and configure Splunk Analysis Tools:

• IT Service Intelligence (ITSI)
  • Create Base Searches and enable automation to add new system components
  • Create KPIs and SLAs
  • Configure Services
  • Configure AI assisted thresholds and alerting

Step 4

Deploy and configure Splunk Automated Incident Response:

• Splunk On-Call
  • Set up scripted responses
  • Nominate response teams and conditions
  • Configure mobile controls.

What now?

Avocado understands change in a complex environment can be challenging – but it doesn’t need to be.  Take the first step and have our team of professionals conduct a discovery, analysis, and report on your environment to create a roadmap to a fully Observable system.

Fill out the form below to request more information on the Splunk Observability solution and our team will be in touch.