Book Image

Observability with Grafana

By : Rob Chapman, Peter Holmes
Book Image

Observability with Grafana

By: Rob Chapman, Peter Holmes

Overview of this book

To overcome application monitoring and observability challenges, Grafana Labs offers a modern, highly scalable, cost-effective Loki, Grafana, Tempo, and Mimir (LGTM) stack along with Prometheus for the collection, visualization, and storage of telemetry data. Beginning with an overview of observability concepts, this book teaches you how to instrument code and monitor systems in practice using standard protocols and Grafana libraries. As you progress, you’ll create a free Grafana cloud instance and deploy a demo application to a Kubernetes cluster to delve into the implementation of the LGTM stack. You’ll learn how to connect Grafana Cloud to AWS, GCP, and Azure to collect infrastructure data, build interactive dashboards, make use of service level indicators and objectives to produce great alerts, and leverage the AI & ML capabilities to keep your systems healthy. You’ll also explore real user monitoring with Faro and performance monitoring with Pyroscope and k6. Advanced concepts like architecting a Grafana installation, using automation and infrastructure as code tools for DevOps processes, troubleshooting strategies, and best practices to avoid common pitfalls will also be covered. After reading this book, you’ll be able to use the Grafana stack to deliver amazing operational results for the systems your organization uses.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Part 1: Get Started with Grafana and Observability
5
Part 2: Implement Telemetry in Grafana
10
Part 3: Grafana in Practice
15
Part 4: Advanced Applications and Best Practices of Grafana

Architecting your observability platform

Understanding and articulating the problem(s) your organization is trying to solve is the most critical and undervalued aspect of a well-architected observability platform. There are some common problems that organizations are trying to solve with observability, but every organization is different, and working with people such as Masha (senior leadership, as introduced in Chapter 1) to understand the business needs is a step that is often missed and can lead to complex problems in the future.

Here are some common problems that organizations face that can be solved with an observability platform:

  • Customer-affecting incidents: These types of incidents could range from downtime to data breaches. These pose a compliance, operational, and reputational risk to the organization. The customers could be internal or external to the organization.
  • Understanding the organization’s key performance indicators (KPIs): Organizations often...