Practice · o11y
What does o11y mean?
o11y is shorthand for observability. It is a numeronym: the first letter o, the number of letters in between (eleven), and the last letter y, the same pattern as k8s for Kubernetes and i18n for internationalization. Engineers use it for the practice of understanding a system from the telemetry it emits: metrics, logs, traces, and profiles.
How to get started with o11y
- 1 Read o11y as observability: a property your systems have, not a product you buy.
- 2 Start with the user's view: define service level indicators for the journeys that matter.
- 3 Instrument with OpenTelemetry so metrics, logs, and traces share context.
- 4 Practice asking new questions of production data, then turn the answers into alerts and runbooks.
The common mistake
What is the most common mistake with o11y?
Using o11y as a new label for the same dashboards. If you cannot answer a question you did not plan for without shipping new code, you have monitoring, not observability.