O11y Architecture - Financial Payments Common Observability Elements

Cloud native technology has been changing the way payment services are architected. In 2020 I presented a series with insights from real implementations adopting open source and cloud native technology to modernize payment services. 

The series consisted of six articles and covered architectural diagrams from logical, schematic, to detailed views of the various  use cases uncovered. 

The architectures presented were based on open source cloud native technologies, such as containers, microservices, and a Kubernetes based container platform. The major omission in this series was to avoid discussing any aspect of cloud native observability. This series will take a look at fixing that omission with an open source standards based cloud native observability platform that helps DevOps teams control the speed, scale, and complexity of a cloud native world for their financial payments architecture.

The part one introduction covered the baseline architecture, defined the payments project, and shared the planning for this series in adding observability to the logical and physical architectures. In this article we'll explore the logical diagram that captures the elements of a successful payments solution.

O11y Architecture - Financial Payments Introduction

Back in September 2020 I was researching open source architectures, meaning looking at several customer solutions from my employer at the time and developing a generic view of these solutions for certain use cases.

One of the use cases is known as financial payments and back in 2020 I kicked off a series covering this architecture with the article Payments architecture - An introduction. The series consisted of six articles and covered architectural diagrams from logical, schematic, to detailed views of the various  use cases we uncovered. 

The architectures presented were based on open source cloud native technologies, such as containers, microservices, and a Kubernetes based container platform. The major omission in this series was to avoid discussing any aspect of cloud native observability. 

This series will take a look at fixing that omission with an open source standards based cloud native observability platform that helps DevOps teams control the speed, scale, and complexity of a cloud native world for their financial payments architecture.

KCD Czech & Slovak 2023: Engaging Your Execs - Telling Great Observability Tales Inspiring Action (slides + video)

Today I spoke at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Kubernetes Community Day (KCD) in Bratislava,Slovakia.

I've been to Bratislava in the past to keynote for another conference at the same location and was deeply impressed with the depth of knowledge walking around that university. 

 

I want to share the slides from my talk along with the abstract, so see below for both. The session was also recorded so will be sharing that when available too.

Techie Brekkie Bristol Meetup - Observability for you and me with OpenTelemetry

Over the last few weeks I've been put in contact with the Techie Brekkie Bristol meetup group who were looking for a speaker for this month. 

I'm always up for something new and this is the very first time I'll be presenting to a breakfast group in the early morning. 

After a few back and forth through email, I met with the organization. I gave them a list of possible topics that might be of interest from our active collection of talks and they have selected one.

I'll be there in Bristol, UK on the morning of 31 May 2023 to present the talk that covers getting started with OpenTelemetry for your tracing needs.

WTF is SRE 2023 - Telling Effective Tales About Production (slides + recording)

Spent this week in London at the WTF is SRE 2023 conference sharing some thoughts on how to tell more effective tales in your organization of effect change. 

It was the fourth edition of this event and they  pulled together four tracks; Observability, Reliability, DevEx and DevSecOps. 

You must be asking the same thing I was when I first saw this conference, what is WTF is SRE? Well as they say on their site, "It is a highly-rated, very-tweeted-about, ridiculously-fun, wildly-insightful two-day conference designed to improve the world of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)."

As you can tell from the tone and style, these have got to be some really fun people to hang out with for a few days, so here's my thoughts and the slides from my talk.

Getting Started with Prometheus - Using Advanced Queries

Are you looking to get away from proprietary instrumentation? 

Are you interested in open source observability but lack the knowledge to just dive right in? 

This workshop is for you, designed to expand your knowledge and understanding of open source observability tooling that is available to you today.

Dive right into a free, online, self paced, hands-on workshop introducing you to Prometheus. Prometheus is an open source systems monitoring and alerting tool kit that enables you to hit the ground running with discovering, collecting, and querying your observability today. Over the course of this workshop you will learn what Prometheus is, what it is not, install it, start collecting metrics, and learn all the things you need to know to become effective at running Prometheus in your observability stack. 

Previously, I shared an introduction to Prometheus, installing Prometheus, an introduction to the query language, and exploring basic queries as free online worksop labs. In this article you'll continue your journey using advanced Prometheus queries with PromQL .

Open Source Edinburgh Meetup - Getting Started with Prometheus Workshop

Next month I'm heading back to Edinburgh to speak at the Open Source Edinburgh Meetup about how to get started with Prometheus.

With over 700 members, this group is spot on for the topic I'm presenting. Sharing the open source cloud native observability tooling and how to get started with it should resonate well with this audience. 

On 11 May 2023 I'll be at the offices of Scott Logic (just down the hill from Edinburgh Castle) and the meetup details where placed online this week.

Google Lightning Talk - Optimizing Observability Spend: Metrics

Today on day 1 of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon I was asked to speak in a lighting talk slot at the Google booth. 

The topic was, of course one that is on the lips of everyone here at the event, how can I save on costs?

I thought it would be interesting to share my observations on how you can optimize your observability spend in this rather chaotic cloud native world.

Below you'll find the slides I presented, and a short abstract of the talk.

KubeCon EU - Summary of Observability Day Europe

Yesterday kicked off the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon event with a slew of off-site events. I dropped in on Observability Day Europe and wanted to share a few things I found interesting. 

This event was setup to foster collaboration, discussion, and knowledge sharing of cloud-native observability projects (including but not necessarily limited to Prometheus, Fluentd, Fluent Bit, OpenTelemetry, and OpenMetrics), as well as vendor-neutral best practices for addressing observability challenges. It was intended both for audiences that are new to observability as well as for seasoned practitioners. Observability Day enabled you to spend a day peeking under the hood of major Cloud Native Computing Foundation observability-related projects and broadening your knowledge of observability.

We were on-site in Amsterdam at the RAI conference center. The full schedule for Observability Day is available online but wanted to share an overview impression of what it was like to be there.

The day is centered around all the CNCF projects related to open observability and is full of both vendors and project focused talks.

Cloud Native Rejekts 2023 - Observability For You and Me with OpenTelemetry

The Cloud Native Rejekts 2023 is a fun event that is playing off of the main event later in the week, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Eu. Basically, if your talk was rejected, you can give it here!

This is a bit of a different article than normal in that I was not planning to present at the Cloud Native Rejekts event, but due to late minute cancellation of a speaker on my team, I was slotted in.

The session will be a talk on observability and the open source community project known as OpenTelemetry, a basic introduction to the concepts and technology..

The talk was originally to be given by Paige Cruz, but she's unable to attend so I'm filling her slot. As promised in my talk, the slides are provided below along with the session abstract.

Open Source 101 2023 - Observability For You and Me with OpenTelemetry (video)

As mentioned previously, I spoke at the Open Source 101 series conference in Charlotte, NC on 23 March 2023 and shared my slides from the presentation in that article.

It was a nice introductory session for all of us that are looking at open source tracing solutions within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) projects, and specifically to the project called OpenTelemetry.

As promised in my talk, the recording is provided below along with the session abstract.

Getting Started With Prometheus - Exploring Basic Queries

 Are you looking to get away from proprietary instrumentation? 

Are you interested in open source observability but lack the knowledge to just dive right in? 

This workshop is for you, designed to expand your knowledge and understanding of open source observability tooling that is available to you today.

Dive right into a free, online, self paced, hands-on workshop introducing you to Prometheus. Prometheus is an open source systems monitoring and alerting tool kit that enables you to hit the ground running with discovering, collecting, and querying your observability today. Over the course of this workshop you will learn what Prometheus is, what it is not, install it, start collecting metrics, and learn all the things you need to know to become effective at running Prometheus in your observability stack. 

Previously, I shared an introduction to Prometheus, installing Prometheus, and introduction to the query language as free online worksop labs. In this article you'll continue your journey exploring  basic Prometheus queries using PromQL.

KCD Czech & Slovak 2023 - Telling Great Observability Tales Inspiring Action

Next month the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is organizing the Kubernetes Community Day (KCD) in Bratislava,Slovakia. 

I've been to Bratislava in the past to keynote for another conference at the same location and was deeply impressed with the depth of knowledge walking around that university. 

On 19-21 May 2023 the KCD Czech & Slovak 2023 will take place in Bratislava and their call for papers went out at the beginning of the year. I was excited to be able to submit a few talks and even more excited to have the following accepted.

Getting Started With Prometheus - Introduction to the Query Language

Are you looking to get away from proprietary instrumentation? 

Are you interested in open source observability but lack the knowledge to just dive right in? 

This workshop is for you, designed to expand your knowledge and understanding of open source observability tooling that is available to you today.

Dive right into a free, online, self paced, hands-on workshop introducing you to Prometheus. Prometheus is an open source systems monitoring and alerting tool kit that enables you to hit the ground running with discovering, collecting, and querying your observability today. Over the course of this workshop you will learn what Prometheus is, what it is not, install it, start collecting metrics, and learn all the things you need to know to become effective at running Prometheus in your observability stack. 

Previously, I shared an introduction to Prometheus and installing Prometheus as free online worksop labs. In this article you'll continue your journey with an introduction to the Prometheus query language, also known as PromQL.

Open Source 101 2023 - Observability For You and Me with OpenTelemetry (slides)

 As mentioned previously, I submitted the Open Source 101 series conference being hosted in Charlotte, NC on 23 March 2023.

Interestingly enough, they picked up a talk on observability and the open source community project known as OpenTelemetry.

I was to give this talk with a co-speaker Paige Cruz, but she's going to be on the West Coast speaking at three other events during this same time period, so I'm flying solo.

As promised in my talk, the slides are provided below along with the session abstract.