Observability Fundamentals Cheat Sheet

Pillars, telemetry, and actionable alerts

Last Updated: November 21, 2025

Focus Areas

Focus
Align SLIs/SLOs with business outcomes
Correlate metrics, traces, and logs for deeper insight

Commands & Queries

sum(rate(http_requests_total[5m]))
Spot request volume trends in PromQL
otelcol --config=/etc/otel/config.yaml
Run the OpenTelemetry Collector with your exporters
alertmanager reload
Apply updated alerting rules without downtime

Summary

Keep a single timeline of telemetry signals, guard against alert fatigue, and iterate on SLO burn rates weekly.

💡 Pro Tip: Start with SLIs/SLOs and centralize logs before adding dashboards.
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