Preface

Observability refers to the ability to gain insights into the internal state of a system by analyzing the external outputs or data produced by the system. Achieving observability is complex in modern application architectures due to their distributed nature.

While talking to customers and builders, we realized the information required to leverage observability benefits using AWS’s native tools and services is spread across many service-specific documents without a concise view and practical examples. That’s why we decided to write this book for practitioners looking for a straightforward, hands-on source.

In this book, we will explore how to configure and use various AWS services to achieve full-stack observability for your workloads running on AWS. The guide covers key concepts such as understanding the need for observability for different architectures, such as monolith, microservices, and serverless computing, on AWS. The book also highlights how Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) can benefit from AWS’s automated and machine learning offerings to achieve more with less management overhead. We will also look into how developers can achieve observability for their applications and roll out changes confidently with the help of observability. Furthermore, we will dive into the open source observability options available on AWS.

Then, we will look into the architecture best practice recommendations for your observability workloads, the importance of observability in achieving faster adoption of the cloud, and the approach to observability in a large organization.