The 2am scenario
| Without observability | With observability |
|---|---|
| “Something’s broken” | “Error rate spiked at 2:14am” |
| SSH into servers, grep logs | Click from alert to dashboard |
| Guess and check | See the exact service and error |
| Hours to diagnose | Minutes to root cause |
Questions observability answers
| Question | Business impact |
|---|---|
| “Is my infrastructure healthy?” | Prevent outages before users notice |
| “Which service is causing errors?” | Faster incident response |
| “Why is this request slow?” | Better customer experience |
| “What’s my actual resource usage?” | Right-size infrastructure, reduce costs |
The real question
Observability isn’t optional. The question is: where should you start?
That’s what this course helps you figure out.
Script
Before we dive into frameworks and levels, let’s talk about why any of this matters. What problems does observability actually solve?
Picture this: it’s 2am, your phone buzzes, and customers are complaining that checkouts are failing. Without observability, you’re flying blind. You log into servers, grep through logs, guess at what might be wrong. Hours pass.
With observability? You see a spike in error rates, drill into the affected service, and find a database connection pool exhausted. Twenty minutes, not two hours.
Or consider capacity planning. Without observability, you overprovision because you’re scared of running out. With it, you see exactly how much headroom you have and scale confidently.
These aren’t hypothetical benefits. They’re the daily reality for teams with solid observability foundations. The question isn’t whether observability is valuable. It’s where to start.