Topics include Monitoring distributed systems, Alerting, and Troubleshooting. Observability services collect, analyze, and correlate telemetry data, such as log data, metric data, and trace data. For example, a label that indicates the severity of an alert or a customer ID in log data provides context that is useful for troubleshooting and debugging. Because traces are composed of spans, which are records for a single function or operation, they let you follow the flow of requests and examine latency data.
Observability tools help track dependencies, detect failures quickly, and maintain performance across distributed environments. Observability analyzes metrics, logs, and traces together, helping engineers explore unknown problems across distributed systems. For enterprises dealing with a microservices architecture, automation of root cause analysis can save engineers plenty of time in tracking performance issues.
The Grafana + Prometheus + Loki + Tempo (LGTM) stack is production-grade, free, and used by thousands of companies. Industry-leading at high data volumes with NoSample distributed tracing. Enterprise-focused with strong support for legacy systems and modern cloud-native architectures. This correlation is what makes observability powerful for modern distributed systems. Which industries benefit the most from cloud observability tools?
- Cisco Observability with Splunk and AppDynamics is a strong fit for large enterprises with log-heavy operations, mature security programs, complex application landscapes, and existing Cisco/Splunk investments.
- Organizations that do not need deep APM, log analytics, security correlation, and transaction visibility may find the portfolio more complex than necessary.
- New Relic is a developer-centric observability platform built around a unified telemetry data platform, application performance monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, logs, digital experience monitoring, AI monitoring, and business-context analytics.
- However, cloud observability tools widen the aperture to include the entire IT infrastructure—including containers, cloud-native storage, and network latency.
- Observability helps you understand why it broke by providing deep insights into system behavior and performance patterns.
- Access is managed via a cross-account role, connecting the account to CloudZero as a Resource Account.
Our methodology for selecting a hybrid cloud observability tool
Commercial hybrid platforms (such as Checkmk) bridge this gap by delivering turnkey automation, governance, and multi-tenancy, while increasingly supporting open standards (like OTel metrics) to maintain data portability. This is driving enterprises toward infrastructure-first platforms with host- or service-based pricing to decouple visibility from data volume costs. On the other side are open-source observability stacks that offer flexibility and data portability but often require significant engineering effort to operate, secure, and maintain. An effective observability platform should integrate with cloud providers, ITSM systems, on-call tools, collaboration platforms, and automation workflows.
Grafana Cloud: The Open Source Visualizer
LogicMonitor is strong for SaaS-based hybrid infrastructure observability, but organizations that require self-hosted operation, full deployment control, strict local data retention, or restricted-network monitoring may find a SaaS-first architecture less suitable. Honeycomb is not designed as a primary platform for traditional infrastructure monitoring across on-premises networks, hypervisors, storage systems, bare-metal hardware, or large hybrid IT environments. It is designed for engineering teams that need to ask new questions during incidents instead of relying only on predefined dashboards and static metrics. Honeycomb is an observability platform built for high-cardinality event analysis, distributed tracing, and fast debugging in complex microservice architectures. It is especially strong for organizations that need fast log search, flexible analytics, and the ability to connect observability data with security workflows.
With the right choice, you’ll empower your engineers to find and fix issues faster, optimize system performance, and ultimately deliver a better experience to your users. With a clear understanding of your requirements and the strengths of each vendor, you can confidently select a platform that will become a force-multiplier for your reliability and efficiency. In summary, today’s observability landscape offers a range of powerful platforms – each with different strengths to fit various needs. By systematically addressing security at each “C,” organizations create a defense-in-depth for their cloud-native applications.
It is available in SaaS and self-hosted deployment models, giving enterprises flexibility across cloud-first and controlled on-premises environments. SolarWinds Observability extends the company’s long-standing strength in network and infrastructure monitoring into a broader platform for hybrid IT, covering on-premises infrastructure, cloud resources, applications, databases, logs, and user experience signals. It does not provide native long-term storage, log analytics, distributed tracing, advanced dashboards, enterprise reporting, or broad out-of-the-box monitoring for traditional infrastructure without additional components. Its multidimensional data model, https://thefourthwallgame.com/moving-beyond-basic-soc-2-why-companies-choose-enhanced-soc-2-plus-attestation/ PromQL query language, service discovery support, and large exporter ecosystem make it a strong choice for teams that want flexible metrics collection without relying on a proprietary vendor.
- This platform is suited for IT teams, application developers, and organizations focused on monitoring web applications, databases, and servers.
- These advanced analytics can automatically detect patterns and anomalies, allowing for proactive problem detection and faster root cause analysis.
- The complexity of modern cloud environments demands a solution that can handle multiple aspects of cloud management.
- Alerting across multiple metrics is a meaningful step up from single threshold monitoring.
- Hence, you need an all-rounder data observability platform that meets your specific business needs.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
It is less suited as a primary enterprise hybrid observability platform for complex on-premises infrastructure, network devices, hypervisors, storage systems, regulated environments, MSP-style multi-tenancy, or very large distributed IT environments. Using Checkmk Ultimate with Multi-Tenancy, Swisscom delivers real-time infrastructure monitoring across highly regulated financial environments with strict role-based access control. It covers a wide range of deployment scenarios, https://doctorwoodland.com/articles/remote-job-opportunities-red-hat/ from the free, open-source Checkmk Community to self-hosted Pro and Ultimate tiers, alongside the managed SaaS option Checkmk Cloud.
- It helps teams monitor and troubleshoot latency issues in microservices architectures by collecting timing data for requests as they flow through distributed systems.
- Sign up for a free account and get 30 days of unlimited access to all features.
- Resolve plant floor and IT issues before they disrupt production.
- With a well-designed tracing layer, you can identify that a single database query is responsible for 92% of total request latency and pinpoint the exact query at fault.
- Best for teams who already know their problem is “distributed systems debugging” and not “I need a dashboard.”
- Built for cloud architectures with multi-tenant SaaS delivery.
It helps teams monitor and troubleshoot transactions across complex microservices architectures. Jaeger is an open source distributed tracing system originally developed by Uber and now a CNCF project. It’s known for its simplicity, efficiency, and cost-effective architecture, making it a popular alternative to Prometheus for long-term metric retention and analytics. Zipkin is an open source distributed tracing system originally developed by Twitter. It is widely used in cloud-native microservices, Kubernetes, and Java-based applications, helping teams understand service dependencies, monitor SLA/SLO compliance, and troubleshoot complex issues.
Remember that the goal is not just to collect data, but to derive actionable insights that make your systems more reliable and your troubleshooting more efficient. By following these steps, you’ll make a well-informed decision and set up your team for success with whichever observability platform you choose. It’s also a fit for teams who outgrew DIY ELK stacks and want a worry-free hosted service with similar capabilities plus more. It targets companies that want a unified solution without running their own ELK stack or multiple disparate tools. Sumo Logic’s Observability suite now includes log management, metrics monitoring, distributed tracing, and even capabilities like Cloud SIEM and SOAR for security operations. It’s a SaaS platform often positioned for large enterprises and hyper-scalers who outgrew the likes of Prometheus or hosted solutions in terms of scale.