Logging, Monitoring, and Alerting

Detect and diagnose incidents quickly with useful telemetry.

  • Structure logs with consistent context fields.
  • Track metrics for latency, error rates, queue depth, and business-critical flows.
  • Alert on user-impacting symptoms, not only infrastructure signals.

Alternatives and when to choose them

  • Minimal monitoring for prototypes and short-lived experiments.
  • Full observability stack for production systems with strict SLAs/SLOs.

Implementation checklist

  • Add request IDs and trace IDs end-to-end.
  • Define severity and ownership for alerts.
  • Run incident drills for critical flows.

Common pitfalls

  • High-volume low-signal alerts causing alert fatigue.
  • Missing dashboards for domain metrics (payments, signup funnel, etc.).

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