Using default observability tooling

Kubernetes provides observability tooling even without adding any third-party solutions. These native Kubernetes tools form the basis of many of the more robust solutions, so they are important to discuss. Since observability includes metrics, logs, traces, and alerts, we will discuss each in turn, focusing first on the Kubernetes-native solutions. First, let's discuss metrics.

Metrics on Kubernetes

A lot of information about your applications can be gained by simply running kubectl describe pod. We can see information about our Pod's spec, what state it is in, and key issues preventing its functionality.

Let's assume we are having some trouble with our application. Specifically, the Pod is not starting. To investigate, we run kubectl describe pod. As a reminder on kubectl aliases mentioned in Chapter 1, Communicating with Kubernetes, kubectl describe pod is the same as kubectl describe pods. Here is an example output from...