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← Back to trackModule: Observability + Incidents

ADVANCED · Medium · 55m

Signals that matter: metrics, logs, traces

Platform Engineering Road

Lesson notes

Goal

Know what to measure and how to use telemetry to make decisions.

The three signals

  • metrics: numbers over time (latency, error rate)
  • logs: events (context)
  • traces: request flow across services

Start with RED (for services)

  • Rate (requests/second)
  • Errors (error rate)
  • Duration (latency)

And USE (for infrastructure)

  • Utilization
  • Saturation
  • Errors

Practical dashboard checklist

  • latency p50/p95/p99
  • error rate
  • throughput
  • CPU/memory
  • dependency health

Next Step

Incident response: use these signals to triage and recover faster.

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Signals that matter: metrics, logs, traces

55m · Open lesson →

MEDIUM

Goal: Know what to measure and how to use telemetry to make decisions. The three signals metrics: numbers over time (latency, error rate) logs: events (context) traces: request flow across services Start with RED (for se…

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