Observability Basics Cheat Sheet

Last Updated: November 21, 2025

Signal Types

Signal Role
Metrics Numeric measurements for dashboards
Logs Event streams with context
Traces Request graphs and spans

Telemetry Pipeline

otelcol --config=config.yaml
Collect metrics/logs/traces in one agent
prometheus --config.file=prom.yml
Scrape exporters on schedule
loki -config.file=loki.yml
Store log streams with labels

Alerting Actions

alertmanager reload
Pick up new routes/policies
pagerduty trigger
Fire incident payload
opsgenie ack
Acknowledge before escalating
💡 Pro Tip: Always tag telemetry with environment/service to filter noise.
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