By Jamie Dawson
With tech stacks becoming increasingly complex with microservices, containers and cloud platforms, the ability to keep systems up-and-running isn’t simply a nice-to-have — its mission critical. Dashboards full of charts can provide you with performance stats, but observability logs give you the complete picture. They show the “who, what, when, where, and why” of each system event, helping teams fix issues quickly.
What are Observability Logs?
Observability logs are quite simply detailed timestamped records emitted from systems, applications and infrastructure components. These logs reach well beyond error reporting. They are structured — often in formats such as JSON — and intended to be searched, filtered, and correlated with metrics and traces.
What differentiates these logs is a context. They’re not just the show-noise (and frequency) of what went wrong, but can help you figure out why it went wrong.
Why Observability Logs Matter
In the old days of monolithic systems, one log file was often sufficient for debugging. But in the modern distributed world, where hundreds of services are always chatting with one another, it becomes impossible. Observability logs provide the visibility to see these intricate relationships clearly.
Here’s why they’re so important:
- Spot issues across multiple services
- Full timeline of events leading up to, during, and after failures
- Conduct an analysis of the system’s performance as well as the actions of their users
- Monitor against potential security logs for suspicious activity subset of monitored security and access logs
- Enhance system performance through monitoring actual data in-the-now
With the proper logs you aren’t guessing — you are diagnosing.
Types of Logs You’ll See
To observe your system completely, you will work with different types of observability logs:
- Application Logs – Monitor code running, how users are using, and performance of apps
- Infrastructure Logs – Log system level activity like CPU, memory, network
- Security Logs – Keep an eye on logins, permission changes, and risk indicators
- Custom Logs – Collect business specific events or KPIs for your use case
These various logs are co-accessible to provide a richer, more accurate view of your system health.
Logging Done Right: Best Practices
Here are a few easy facilitations to get the most out of your observability logs:
- Stick to one structure: You want to have the same format like JSON it will be easy for parsing.
- This provides a comprehensive perspective of the observability of the system by connecting logs and metrics with traces.
- Don’t log too much: Log what’s important, not everything!
- Secure your logs: Anonymize sensitive data for compliance requirements.
- Centralize your logs: Employ a log management system and you can do fast search and analysis.
A good log strategy enables faster, cheaper and more accurate problem-solving.
Closing Thoughts – Log (Source) Clarity
When it comes to distributed systems, visibility is power on the other hand. And your best weapon is observability logs. Logs can tell the story behind every alert, error or slowdown, when gathered and used effectively. They minimize periods of unavailability, they enhance the customer experience, and they provide your team with the information they need to make better systems for the future.
In other words, the clearer you can see, the faster you can act. Observability logs make that possible.
