Title

AWS re:Invent 2023 - Building an effective observability strategy (COP325)

Summary

• The AWS Observability team presented an 8-step guide to building an effective observability strategy.
• The steps include starting with foundational monitoring, progressing to intermediate monitoring, and advancing to mature and proactive observability.
• The importance of observability is highlighted through a typical day in the life of an SRE, emphasizing the need to reduce the cycle of stress, false hope, and desperation.
• Observability is not just about resolving incidents but also about understanding impact, making data-driven decisions, and ensuring customer satisfaction.
• The speakers discussed the importance of knowing what to observe and monitor, focusing on what matters to customers and the business.
• They demonstrated how to extract business metrics from log data using metric filters and embedded metric format (EMF).
• The talk covered alerting strategies, dashboard creation, tool selection, and the importance of standardizing telemetry data formats, such as OpenTelemetry.
• The session concluded with the emphasis on observability as a continuous journey, not a destination, and the need to iterate and improve strategies over time.

Insights

• The AWS Observability Maturity Model is a framework designed to help organizations assess and improve their observability practices as they scale with AWS.
• Observability strategies should be customer-centric, focusing on what is important to the customer experience and business outcomes rather than just technical metrics.
• The use of AI/ML tools in observability can automate processes and operations, leading to improved long-term trend analysis and resource optimization.
• The speakers highlighted the importance of integrating observability with other critical systems like security, incident management, and reliability.
• The concept of "observability is a journey, not a destination" suggests that organizations should continuously seek to enhance their observability practices to adapt to changing needs and technologies.
• The session provided practical advice on how to extract actionable insights from telemetry data, such as using metric filters and EMF for logs, and how to use this data to drive business decisions.
• The importance of documenting observability strategies and making them part of internal processes was emphasized, along with the need to avoid trying to implement everything at once ("don't try to boil the ocean").
• The session underscored the value of reviewing and iterating on observability strategies, especially after incidents, to ensure continuous improvement and alignment with customer and business needs.