Elixir Wizards

Telemetry & Observability for Elixir Apps at Cars.com with Zack Kayser & Ethan Gunderson


Listen Later

Zack Kayser and Ethan Gunderson, Software Engineers at Cars Commerce, join the Elixir Wizards to share their expertise on telemetry and observability in large-scale systems. Drawing from their experience at Cars.com—a platform handling high traffic and concurrent users—they discuss the technical and organizational challenges of scaling applications, managing microservices, and implementing effective observability practices.

The conversation highlights the pivotal role observability plays in diagnosing incidents, anticipating system behavior, and asking unplanned questions of a system. Zack and Ethan explore tracing, spans, and the unique challenges introduced by LiveView deployments and WebSocket connections.

They also discuss the benefits of OpenTelemetry as a vendor-agnostic instrumentation tool, the significance of Elixir’s telemetry library, and practical steps for developers starting their observability journey. Additionally, Zack and Ethan introduce their upcoming book, Instrumenting Elixir Applications, which will offer guidance on integrating telemetry and tracing into Elixir projects.

Topics Discussed:
  • Cars.com’s transition to Elixir and scaling solutions
  • The role of observability in large-scale systems
  • Uncovering insights by asking unplanned system questions
  • Managing high-traffic and concurrent users with Elixir
  • Diagnosing incidents and preventing recurrence using telemetry
  • Balancing data collection with storage constraints
  • Sampling strategies for large data volumes
  • Tracing and spans in observability
  • LiveView’s influence on deployments and WebSocket behavior
  • Mitigating downstream effects of socket reconnections
  • Contextual debugging for system behavior insights
  • Observability strategies for small vs. large-scale apps
  • OpenTelemetry for vendor-agnostic instrumentation
  • Leveraging OpenTelemetry contrib libraries for easy setup
  • Elixir’s telemetry library as an ecosystem cornerstone
  • Tracing as the first step in observability
  • Differentiating observability from business analytics
  • Profiling with OpenTelemetry Erlang project tools
  • The value of profiling for performance insights
  • Making observability tools accessible and impactful for developers
  • Links Mentioned

    https://www.carscommerce.inc/

    https://www.cars.com/
    https://hexdocs.pm/telemetry/readme.html
    https://kubernetes.io/
    https://github.com/ninenines/cowboy
    https://hexdocs.pm/bandit/Bandit.html
    https://hexdocs.pm/broadway/Broadway.html
    https://hexdocs.pm/oban/Oban.html
    https://www.dynatrace.com/
    https://www.jaegertracing.io/
    https://newrelic.com/
    https://www.datadoghq.com/
    https://www.honeycomb.io/
    https://fly.io/phoenix-files/how-phoenix-liveview-form-auto-recovery-works/
    https://www.elastic.co/
    https://opentelemetry.io/
    https://opentelemetry.io/docs/languages/erlang/
    https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/signals/traces/
    https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/otel/logs/
    https://github.com/runfinch/finch
    https://hexdocs.pm/telemetry_metrics/Telemetry.Metrics.html
    https://opentelemetry.io/blog/2024/state-profiling
    https://www.instrumentingelixir.com/
    https://prometheus.io/
    https://www.datadoghq.com/dg/monitor/ts/statsd/
    https://x.com/kayserzl
    https://github.com/zkayser
    https://bsky.app/profile/ethangunderson.com 
    https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib

    Special Guests: Ethan Gunderson and Zack Kayser.

    ...more
    View all episodesView all episodes
    Download on the App Store

    Elixir WizardsBy SmartLogic LLC

    • 4.9
    • 4.9
    • 4.9
    • 4.9
    • 4.9

    4.9

    22 ratings


    More shows like Elixir Wizards

    View all
    Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers by se-radio@computer.org

    Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers

    262 Listeners

    The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source by Changelog Media

    The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

    285 Listeners

    Startups For the Rest of Us by Rob Walling

    Startups For the Rest of Us

    694 Listeners

    Software Engineering Daily by Software Engineering Daily

    Software Engineering Daily

    630 Listeners

    Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats by Wes Bos & Scott Tolinski - Full Stack JavaScript Web Developers

    Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

    984 Listeners

    REWORK by 37signals

    REWORK

    212 Listeners

    CoRecursive: Coding Stories by Adam Gordon Bell - Software Developer

    CoRecursive: Coding Stories

    185 Listeners

    Elixir Mix by Charles M Wood

    Elixir Mix

    13 Listeners

    The Stack Overflow Podcast by The Stack Overflow Podcast

    The Stack Overflow Podcast

    63 Listeners

    Thinking Elixir Podcast by ThinkingElixir.com

    Thinking Elixir Podcast

    31 Listeners

    Beam Radio by Lars Wikman

    Beam Radio

    11 Listeners

    Software Unscripted by Richard Feldman

    Software Unscripted

    26 Listeners

    Oxide and Friends by Oxide Computer Company

    Oxide and Friends

    47 Listeners

    Elixir Mentor by Jacob Luetzow

    Elixir Mentor

    2 Listeners

    Elixir Friends by German Velasco

    Elixir Friends

    0 Listeners