Definition
Observability is a measure of how well you can understand what a system is doing from its outputs - logs, metrics, and traces - without having to modify the system to ask questions it was not designed to answer. The concept originates from control theory and has become central to cloud-native operations philosophyWhere our thinking comes from, with the sources named rather than presented as our own.. The three pillars are: Logging (structured event logs from services), Metrics (quantitative time-series measurements such as CPU usage, response time, and error rate), and Distributed Tracing (tracking a single request through multiple microservicesArchitecture where an application is split into small, independent services that communicate via APIs. via a trace ID). Tools such as Prometheus and Grafana (metrics), OpenTelemetry (the standard for instrumentation), and Jaeger or Tempo (tracing) are used in observability stacks. In the energy sector, observability is critical for systems handling ElhubNational hub for metering data and market processes in the Norwegian electricity market. integrations: a halted message flow can have serious consequences, and in such situations the ability to diagnose the problem quickly is essential. Good observability is the foundation for SLAService Level Agreement - contract defining guaranteed availability and performance for a service. compliance and proactive operational monitoring.