Observability Training

The goal of the training is to teach participants the fundamentals of modern observability and empower them to effectively use observability concepts with proven patterns and tools in operations.

Participants will understand:

• What observability is and why it is essential for modern systems.
• How metrics, logs, and traces work together.
• How observability tools are used to optimize performance, proactively detect errors, and sustainably improve the user experience.

After the training, participants will be able to interpret observability data and use it specifically for operations, troubleshooting, and the further development of their systems.

This 2-day training lays the theoretical and practical basis for modern observability concepts. The focus is on the three pillars of observability—Metrics, Logs, and Traces—as well as their integration into a holistic observability architecture.

In addition to teaching concepts and best practices, the focus is on the user perspective:How are observability tools used in everyday life? What requirements do operations teams have regarding dashboards, alarms, and analysis functions? And how does observability data support troubleshooting and performance optimization?

The training content is divided into thematic sections. Each section combines an interactive theory part with a subsequent Lab & Exercise unit, in which participants apply what they have learned independently.

Key Topics:

• Introduction to modern Observability – Concepts, patterns, and distinctions.
• Differences between Monitoring, Observability, and Logging.
• The three pillars of Observability: Metrics, Traces, and Logs.
• Modern observability architectures and end-to-end approaches.
• Overview and use of relevant tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Kibana, Loki, OpenTelemetry, Jaeger).
• Best practices for SLOs, error detection, and performance optimization.
• Observability as part of the DevOps and CI/CD lifecycle.
• Observability in Kubernetes and cloud-native environments.
• User perspective: Using observability for operations and collaboration.
• Troubleshooting and scaling observability systems.

Structure / Agenda

Day 1: Fundamentals, Concepts, and Architectures

• Introduction to Observability: Motivation, benefits, and use cases.
• Monitoring vs. Observability vs. Logging.
• The three pillars of Observability.
• Distributed Tracing: Concepts and application.
• Metrics and Logs as central analysis instruments.
• End-to-end observability architectures.
• Practical Exercises: Analysis of logs, metrics, and traces.

Day 2: Tools, Operations, and Practice

• Overview of observability tools and their interaction.
• Prometheus, Grafana, Kibana, Loki.
• OpenTelemetry and Jaeger.
• Best practices for observability in the DevOps environment.
• Observability in Kubernetes and cloud environments.
• Using dashboards and KPIs for proactive monitoring.
• Troubleshooting and performance optimization with observability data.
• Practical Exercises:
  • Creating and customizing dashboards.
  • Log analysis and error identification.
  • Distributed tracing and performance analysis.
  • Scaling observability solutions.

• Duration: 2 days (expandable to 3 days for a Deep Dive).
• Location: Optional On-site / Remote.
• Language: Optional German / English.
• Number of Participants: Min. 5 - Max. 10.

Prerequisites

• Confident handling of Git, YAML, Bash, and Docker.
• Basic knowledge of cloud-native development.
• Ideally, practical experience with Kubernetes.

Technical Requirements

• Notebook with internet connection.
• Current web browser.