On the latest Livin’ on the Edge podcast (and my last episode for Season 3), I interviewed Vasil Kaftandzhiev, a fellow Product Manager at Grafana. We explored the importance of observability in IT systems, particularly in the context of cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes management.

Observability is the constant monitoring of the system and of business KPIs with the goal of understanding why something is happening. It goes beyond the here-and-now of just monitoring (which itself is key to observability) and extends to the analysis and understanding of broader problems or issues, the underlying system and root causes.

Vasil’s team at Grafana has been focused on building opinionated observability solutions that are based on technology best practices and observability best practices. He shared a few of those best observations with us below. We also dove into the actual difference between plain monitoring and true observability, the role of AI and ML within observability, and, of course, the importance of resource utilization and cost management in Kubernetes.