KCD Porto: Choose Your Own Adventure - Cloud Native Observability Pitfalls (slides)

Today I presented at  KCD Porto in Portugal, speaking to one of my favorite subjects in observability.  .

This inaugural event was really well done and had four different stages with talks from key-note speakers, leading experts and technical experts, and interactive workshops. 

There were a lot of different opportunities for networking across the two day event in sunny Porto, where the food, snacks and drinks throughout the event were nothing short of amazing! There were over +300 attendees at the Alfandega Congress Center which is right on the Douro river, so the views from my session were stunning out over the river. 

Below you will find the slides from my session and the abstract.

A Hands-on Guide to OpenTelemetry - Linking Metrics to Traces with Exemplars (part 1)

Are you ready to start your journey on the road to collecting telemetry data from your applications? Great observability begins with great instrumentation! 

In this series you'll explore how to adopt OpenTelemetry (OTel) and how to instrument an application to collect tracing telemetry. You'll learn how to leverage out-of-the-box automatic instrumentation tools and understand when it's necessary to explore more advanced manual instrumentation for your applications. By the end of this series you'll have an understanding of how telemetry travels from your applications, to the OpenTelemetry Collector, and be ready to bring OpenTelemetry to your future projects. Everything discussed here is supported by a hands-on, self-paced workshop authored by Paige Cruz. 

The previous article explored how developers are able to manually instrument their applications to generate specific metadata for our business to derive better insights faster. In this article we'll look at the first part of how to link metrics to trace data using exemplars.

Infobip Shift EU 2024: Platform Engineers Arise! Adding Observability to Your Platform Toolbox (slides)

Today I shared my workshop collection on the attending Platform Engineers, giving them all they needed to get started integrating observability from the ground up in their developer experiences. This all focused on the metrics, tracing, pipeline, and visualization projects from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

This year's Infobip Shift EU was from 15-17 September and below you will find the outline of my workshop I'm giving covering observability for Platform Engineers. 

My talk was based on an observability workshop collection covering metrics, tracing, pipelines, and visualization of telemetry data. Platform engineering can and should include observability from the basic start of their developer experience and these open source CNCF projects all provide what you need to get started.

Below you will find my slides and the original abstract from my workshop.

PromCon EU 2024: Meet the New Kid in the Sandbox - Integrating Perses Visualization with Prometheus (slides + video)

Today I shared an update on the Perses dashboard and visualization project, the newest member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Sandbox tier.

It was at PromCon EU 2024 in Berlin, Germany and I shared about how far along Perses is, including how easily you can start integrating it with the Prometheus monitoring system today.

I've been attending this event for the last two years since my career took me in the direction of cloud native observability, with CNCF projects like Prometheus being the natural direction I gravitated towards. Since working with Prometheus, I've also gotten involved with Perses, which is focused on providing true open source visualization and dashboards to the users of Prometheus.

Let's look at the talk, the slides, and video recording of my session.

A Hands-on Guide to OpenTelemetry - Manual Instrumentation for Developers

 Are you ready to start your journey on the road to collecting telemetry data from your applications? Great observability begins with great instrumentation! 

In this series you'll explore how to adopt OpenTelemetry (OTel) and how to instrument an application to collect tracing telemetry. You'll learn how to leverage out-of-the-box automatic instrumentation tools and understand when it's necessary to explore more advanced manual instrumentation for your applications. By the end of this series you'll have an understanding of how telemetry travels from your applications, to the OpenTelemetry Collector, and be ready to bring OpenTelemetry to your future projects. Everything discussed here is supported by a hands-on, self-paced workshop authored by Paige Cruz. 

The previous article zoomed into the usage of Jaeger to help developers when visually exploring their telemetry data. In this article we'll help developers with manually instrumenting to add metadata specific to their application or business allowing them to derive better insights faster.

Infobip Shift EU 2024: Platform Engineers Arise! Adding Observability to Your Platform Toolbox

Back in 2018 I was exposed for the first time to an amazing conference then known as Shift Developer Conference. It was an amazing location in Split, Croatia and one of the founders, Ivan Burazin quickly became a good friend.

I spoke on the main stage which was hosted in the Croatian National Opera House, something that remains a special experience. I've stayed in contact with the organizers and went to Infobip Shift EU in Zadar last September presenting on avoiding the common pitfalls around the flood of cloud data that typically comes with the user experience. In the Spring I was at Infobip Shift NA in Miami to share a workshop focused on the Perses project. 

This year's Infobip Shift EU is from 15-17 September and below you will find the outline of my workshop I'm giving covering observability for Platform Engineers. 

Let's look at the session and activities around this year's event.

Telemetry Pipelines Workshop - Integrating Fluent Bit with OpenTelemetry (part 2)

Are you ready for getting started with cloud native observability with telemetry pipelines? 

This article is part of a series exploring a workshop guiding you through the open source project Fluent Bit, what it is, a basic installation, and setting up a first telemetry pipeline project. Learn how to manage your cloud native data from source to destination using the telemetry pipeline phases covering collection, aggregation, transformation, and forwarding from any source to any destination. 

The previous article in this series we looked at the first part of integrating Fluent Bit with OpenTelemetry for use cases where this connectivity in your telemetry data infrastructure is essential. In this next article, we look at part 2 and finalize our integration of Fluent Bit with OpenTelemetry for use cases where this connectivity in your telemetry data infrastructure is essential.

You can find more details in the accompanying workshop lab.

Let's get started with this use case.

KCD Porto: Choose Your Own Adventure - Cloud Native Observability Pitfalls

A new destination is on the horizon after I was invited to speak at KCD Porto in Portugal on 27-28 September. The fun part of this one is that it's the very first edition in Portugal, adding to my growing list of KCD events where I've made the first time speaker listing.

They list what you can expect as follows:

• 4 different stages with talks from key-note speakers, leading experts and technical experts, while participating in interactive workshops and events. 
• A lot of different opportunities for networking with other linked-minded folks. 
• Tasty food, snacks and drinks throughout the entire event.
• + 300 Diverse attendees & speakers including leading experts from Open Source, DevOps and Cloud Native communities.

It will be located at the Alfandega Congress Center which is right on the Douro river, so looking forward to the views from my session over the river! Let's look at what I plan to talk about.

Telemetry Pipelines Workshop - Integrating Fluent Bit with OpenTelemetry (part 1)

Are you ready for getting started with cloud native observability with telemetry pipelines? 

This article is part of a series exploring a workshop guiding you through the open source project Fluent Bit, what it is, a basic installation, and setting up a first telemetry pipeline project. Learn how to manage your cloud native data from source to destination using the telemetry pipeline phases covering collection, aggregation, transformation, and forwarding from any source to any destination. 

The previous article in this series we looked at how to enable Fluent Bit features that will help with avoiding telemetry data loss we saw when encountering backpressure. In this next article, we look at part one of integrating Fluent Bit with OpenTelemetry for use cases where this connectivity in your telemetry data infrastructure is essential.

You can find more details in the accompanying workshop lab.

Let's get started with this use case.

PromCon EU: Meet the New Kid in the Sandbox - Integrating Visualization with Prometheus

I'm going to be speaking at the one and only PromCon EU 2024 on 11-12 September in Berlin, Germany. This is a single track event with a set size of 300 attendees dedicated to the Prometheus monitoring system.

As they state on the website, "PromCon aims to connect Prometheus users and developers from around the world in order to exchange knowledge, best practices, and experience gained around using Prometheus. We also want to collaborate to build a community and grow professional connections around systems and service monitoring."

I've been attending this event for the last two years since my career took me in the direction of cloud native observability, with Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) projects like Prometheus being the natural direction I gravitated towards. Since working with Prometheus, I've also gotten involved with a new project called Perses, which is focused on providing true open source visualization and dashboards to the users of Prometheus.

Let's look at the talk I'm going to give to introduce you to this new kid on the block, Perses.

A Hands-on Guide to OpenTelemetry - Exploring Telemetry Data with Jaeger

Are you ready to start your journey on the road to collecting telemetry data from your applications? Great observability begins with great instrumentation! 

In this series you'll explore how to adopt OpenTelemetry (OTel) and how to instrument an application to collect tracing telemetry. You'll learn how to leverage out-of-the-box automatic instrumentation tools and understand when it's necessary to explore more advanced manual instrumentation for your applications. By the end of this series you'll have an understanding of how telemetry travels from your applications, to the OpenTelemetry Collector, and be ready to bring OpenTelemetry to your future projects. Everything discussed here is supported by a hands-on, self-paced workshop authored by Paige Cruz. 

The previous article programmatically instrumented and configured an application to direct all telemetry data to a Jaeger instance for visual insights. In this article we'll zoom into the usage of Jaeger to help developers when visually exploring their telemetry data.

Cloud Native London Meetup - Taking Back Control of Your Telemetry Data with Fluent Bit (slides)

  

Yesterday I was to be back to the Cloud Native London meetup, having been given the opportunity to present due to a speaker canceling at the last minute.

They have +7,000 members and it is, "...the official Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Meetup group dedicated to building a strong, open, diverse developer community around the Cloud Native platform and technologies in London." 

There was instead an evacuation of the area due to expected riots in the UK. I am sorry to miss the chance to present this session but still wanted to share below the slides from my session and plan to post a personal recording of the talk when I get back home from Lon.

Cloud Native London Meetup - Taking Back Control of Your Telemetry Data with Fluent Bit

 I'm heading back to the Cloud Native London meetup this week, having been given the opportunity to present due to a speaker canceling.

I am always happy to help out and the hop to London from the Netherlands is a short and easy trip.

They have +7,000 members and it is, "...the official Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Meetup group dedicated to building a strong, open, diverse developer community around the Cloud Native platform and technologies in London." You can also find them on their own slack channel, so feel free to drop in for a quick chat if you like.

The sessions I've presented previously include one from January 2023 about the pitfalls everyone should avoid with cloud data and a recording is available online if you want to revisit. Another session I shared was in January of 2024 on the pitfalls in observability in the form of a choose your own adventure talk which you can also watch the recording online.

Tomorrow, on Wednesday, 7 August in London I'll be sharing some brand new content on taking back control of your telemetry data.