Cloud Native Observability

Chapter 1. The Cloud Native Impact on Observability

Cloud native technologies have changed how people around the world work. They allow us to build scalable, resilient, and novel software architectures with idiomatic backend systems using an open source ecosystem and open governance.

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) defines “cloud native” as technologies that empower organizations to build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic environments such as public, private, and hybrid clouds.¹ Containers, service meshes, microservices, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs exemplify this approach.

Our own in-the-trenches understanding of cloud native leads us to define cloud native technologies simply as technologies that are highly interlinked, flexible, and scalable using cloud technologies as first-class building blocks.

This then leads us to a discussion about cloud native observability. However, let’s define what observability is first. According to the CNCF, observability is “a system property that defines the degree to which the system can generate actionable insights. It allows users to understand a system’s state from these external outputs and take (corrective) action.”²

With this in mind, we are defining cloud native observability as the ability to measure how well you can understand the total state of your system with all of the complexities of a highly interlinked, flexible, and scalable system running in containers on a microservices architecture ...