Developer-First Observability with Micha “Mies” Hernandez van Leuffen
Oct 16, 2023
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Micha Hernandez van Leuffen, an expert in observability and incidents, discusses the challenges of achieving observability, incident investigation in remote collaboration, tracking custom metrics with Autometrics, developer-first observability, and standardizing metrics and incident management.
Tracking the right metrics, like error rates and latency, is crucial for improving incident response and investigation.
Empowering developers with tools like AutoMetrics and involving them in observability and incident management promotes a culture of continuous improvement.
Deep dives
Importance of Observability and Tracking the Right Metrics
Observability is critical in incident management, but many struggle to implement it effectively. Logs are often used as a primary source of observability data, but metrics are underutilized. Metrics are more cost-effective and provide specific numbers to indicate system issues. It is important to track the right metrics, such as error rates and latency, to improve incident response and investigation.
Collaborative Notebooks and Remote Incident Management
The shift to remote work has impacted incident management processes. Virtual war rooms and collaborative notebooks like Fiberplane enable remote team collaboration during incident investigations. These tools allow for capturing real-time incident data, providing a shared space for communication, and facilitating data-driven analysis. The collaborative notebook model helps developers and operations teams work together and ensures everyone has access to critical incident information.
The Role of Post-Mortems in Incident Management
Post-mortems are a valuable practice for analyzing incidents and improving future incident management. Ideally, post-mortems should be written in parallel to incident resolution, providing real-time documentation of investigations. Recording the incident investigation process, including data analysis, behaviors observed, actions taken, and solutions, helps build a system of record. This ensures knowledge is retained, can be shared with new team members, and helps prevent repeating the same mistakes.
Developer Involvement and Ownership in Observability
Developers should have a more active role in observability and incident management. By empowering developers with tools like AutoMetrics, functional level metrics can be easily incorporated into the codebase. Developers can define their service level objectives, allowing them to take ownership of observability and understand how their code behaves. This shift from relying solely on operations or SRE teams to a developer-first approach improves incident response and promotes a culture of continuous improvement.
In this episode, Thomas Betts talks with Micha “Mies” Hernandez van Leuffen about observability and incidents, and the roles of developers, SREs and other team members. One challenge is knowing what metrics to track in the first place. A developer-first approach to observability means focusing on metrics that are specific to your application.
Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/48RJNEO
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