Observability vs Monitoring

Monitoring vs Observability

Monitoring

Question: Is the system running?

View: From the outside

Approach: Reactive

Observability

Question: What is happening?

View: From the inside

Approach: Exploratory

Why is classic monitoring no longer sufficient?

• CPU/Memory are not enough to determine if the system is working correctly.
• Distributed systems: microservices, Kubernetes, serverless.
• Different languages, frameworks, and environments.
• Rapid scaling and ephemeral resources.