I was asked to share some insights into the link between Platform Engineers and the importance of providing cloud native observability tools and infrastructure as part of their developer experience from the start.
We had a movie theater as a venue with a nice group of experienced Platform Engineers that I presented the slides you'll find below before letting them choose from four different workshops that featured the CNCF observability technologies for monitoring, tracing, telemetry pipelines, and open visualization.
We kicked it off at 11:00 on Tuesday, March 19th and had a lot of fun. See below for the details.
These are the slides I used to clarify the path from Platform Engineering as a discipline and why they would want to focus on learning the observability open source project landscape that the CNCF provides.
For completeness, here is the title of the session and the original abstract.
Choose Your Own Observability Adventure
Great observability begins with great instrumentation! We know it's hard to decide where to start your observability journey, so we've come up with a perfect introduction to observability workshop collection, getting you hands-on with the best open source cloud native observability projects available. Attendees can pick their own cloud native observability learning path (https://o11y-workshops.gitlab.io) in this session from the following workshops:
OpenTelemetry (traces) - Learn how to adopt OpenTelemetry by instrumenting a sample application with spans and metrics. You’ll leave with an understanding of how telemetry travels and be ready to bring OpenTelemetry to your project. The workshop is self-paced and available online, so attendees can continue to explore after the event: https://o11y-workshops.gitlab.io/workshop-opentelemetry
Prometheus (metrics) - During the workshop, you will install Prometheus, collect metrics, and learn how to effectively run it in your observability stack. The workshop is self-paced and available online, so attendees can continue to explore after the event: https://o11y-workshops.gitlab.io/workshop-prometheus
Fluent Bit (pipelines) - This workshop will guide you through the open source project Fluent Bit, what it is, a basic installation, and setting up a first cloud native observability pipeline project. The workshop is self-paced and available online, so attendees can continue to explore after the event: https://o11y-workshops.gitlab.io/workshop-fluentbit
Perses (visualization) - Great observability is impossible without great visualization! Learn how to adopt truly open visualization by installing Perses, exploring the provided tooling, tinkering with its API, and then get your hands dirty building your first dashboard in no time! The workshop is self-paced and available online, so attendees can continue to explore after the event: https://o11y-workshops.gitlab.io/workshop-perses
This workshop is never the same twice as you the attendees choose from a list of CNCF cloud native observability technologies and get hands-on learning about metrics, data pipelines, traces, and data visualization. Each workshop is engaging and requires attendees to solve common challenges as they learn about the open source solutions that interest them the most!
Thanks to all who attended and I really enjoyed our discussions and the feedback you shared while in the session.