Title

AWS re:Invent 2022 - Unified observability, AIOps, and incident response for AWS (PRT262)

Summary

• Greg Leffler, an Observability Practitioner, and Venkat Raipudi, a Product Manager at Splunk, presented on unified observability, AIOps, and incident response for AWS.
• The session covered the importance of observability in a world where digital interactions have increased significantly, especially post-2020.
• Greg discussed the evolution from monolithic applications to microservices and the complexity it brings, necessitating better observability tools.
• He introduced OpenTelemetry as a critical part of the observability journey, emphasizing its importance for collecting data across services.
• Greg also highlighted the components of an observability system, including application performance monitoring (APM), infrastructure monitoring, and log analysis.
• Venkat introduced Splunk Incident Intelligence, which is integrated with Splunk APM, and demonstrated how it reduces noise, provides full context, and unifies incident response.
• The new features aim to improve mean time to resolution, provide end-to-end context, and support OpenTelemetry.
• Venkat also showcased the mobile app for incident response and the flexibility of the Splunk platform in handling alerts, schedules, and automated workflows.

Insights

• The digital transformation accelerated by the pandemic has made observability a critical aspect of IT operations.
• The shift from monolithic architectures to microservices has increased the complexity of applications, leading to a greater need for sophisticated observability tools that can handle the dynamic nature of modern applications.
• OpenTelemetry is gaining traction as a standard for telemetry data collection, supported by major cloud providers and technology companies.
• Splunk's approach to observability emphasizes the integration of various monitoring tools into a single platform, reducing the need for multiple tools and simplifying incident response.
• The ability to correlate alerts and provide full context for incidents is a key feature that can significantly reduce the time taken to identify and resolve issues.
• The session highlighted the importance of having a unified observability and incident response platform that can scale with the organization and handle compliance and regulatory issues.
• The demonstration of Splunk Incident Intelligence showcased the practical application of the concepts discussed and the benefits of an integrated observability solution.