Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Containers are an amazing technology. They provide huge benefits and create useful constraints for distributing software. Golang-based software doesn’t need a container in the same way Ruby or Python would bundle the runtime and dependencies. For a statically compiled Go application, the container doesn’t need much beyond the binary.

In order for fleet managers at Daimler Truck to manage the day-to-day operations of their vast connected vehicles service, they use tb.lx, a digital product studio that delivers near real-time data along with valuable insights for their networks of trucks and buses around the world. Each connected vehicle utilizes the cTP, an installed piece of technology that generates a small mountain of telemetry data, including speed, GPS position, acceleration values, braking force and more.

Organizations today must embrace a modern observability approach to develop user-centric and reliable software. This isn’t just about tools; it’s about processes, mentality, and having developers actively involved throughout the software development lifecycle up to production release. In recent years, the concept of observability has gained prominence in the world of software development and operations.

”Isn’t Observability something for Ops to worry about?” I’ve heard this response more than once when talking about how developers should learn OpenTelemetry. I wanted to write this piece to show you how important and how easy it is to learn observability from day one as a coder.

Everyone talks about the need for observability, it even comes up in board meetings. But let’s talk about the reasons you shouldn’t add observability to production.

Our industry is in the early days of an explosion in software using LLMs, as well as (separately, but relatedly) a revolution in how engineers write and run code, thanks to generative AI. Many software engineers are encountering LLMs for the very first time, while many ML engineers are being exposed directly to production systems for the very first time.

OpenTelemetry is more than just becoming the open ingestion standard for observability. As one of the major Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) projects, with as many commits as Kubernetes, it is gaining support from major ISVs and cloud providers delivering support for the framework. Many global companies from finance, insurance, tech, and other industries are starting to standardize on OpenTelemetry.

Observability dashboards are powerful tools that enable teams to visualize and monitor the performance, health, and behavior of their applications and infrastructure. However, building observability dashboards is not a straightforward task, and many organizations make common mistakes hindering their ability to gain meaningful insights and respond to issues effectively.

TL;DR: Sometimes I get hung up in the scientific definition of "experiment." In daily work, take inspiration from it. Mostly, remember to look at the results.