Title

AWS re:Invent 2022 - How Discovery increased operational efficiency with AWS observability (COP201)

Summary

Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD) faced challenges with operational intelligence due to a large and diverse technical footprint.
Observability is crucial for WBD, and they define it as the unification of all operationally relevant data.
WBD started with fragmented observability solutions and lacked standardization, which led to inefficiencies.
They introduced an Operational Metadata Specification (OMD) to standardize operational data.
WBD partnered with AWS to create a singular observability platform using AWS services and open-source solutions.
They implemented a templatized approach for logging and metrics, using Fluentd, Kinesis, OpenSearch, Grafana Agent, Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus (AMP), and Grafana.
WBD achieved substantial progress in operational efficiency, scaling from 3 to 12 terabytes of log data ingestion per day and reducing query times.
Future goals include converting logs to metrics, Kubernetes-based cost attribution, OpenTelemetry-backed distributed tracing, and open search cross-cluster search optimizations.

WBD's approach to observability emphasizes the importance of standardization and governance of operational data.
The use of AWS services and open-source tools allowed WBD to streamline their observability processes and reduce the number of tools and interfaces engineers need to interact with.
The adoption of a templatized solution for logging and metrics demonstrates the benefits of a scalable and repeatable approach to observability.
WBD's future goals suggest a trend towards real-time data processing and a focus on cost management and efficiency in observability practices.
The session highlights the importance of managed services in reducing the operational burden and allowing companies to focus on their core business rather than managing infrastructure.