Primer

Cloud native applications are deployed as lots of small moving parts that connect over the network and are frequently updated and replaced. This makes it more important than ever to be able to see how applications are connected and have the ability to track requests as they traverse the various distributed microservices of an application.

To assist with this, every microservice needs to output high-quality telemetry in the form of metrics and log data. You then need the right tools to collect the telemetry, aggregate it, and analyse it for troubleshooting and making adjustments. The process is a feedback loop that looks like Figure 6.1 – observe > analyse > adjust.

Figure 6.1

Even though we’ve been doing things like this for years with traditional monolithic apps, all of the following are either new or far more important with cloud native apps.

• Tracing requests
• Application-specific metrics
• Network latency
• Scaling decisions
• The...