Telemetry is the remote, automated process of collecting, transmitting, and analyzing data from various sources to monitor their performance, status, and environment.
Core Purpose
Telemetry provides observability into cloud environments. It allows engineers and operators to:
- Detect failures or anomalies quickly.
- Understand system performance trends.
- Optimize resource usage and costs.
- Enhance security by detecting suspicious activity.
Types of Telemetry Data
Cloud telemetry generally falls into three main categories:
- Metrics: Numerical values collected at regular intervals.
Examples: CPU usage, request latency, memory utilization.
- Logs: Event-based data that records discrete actions.
Examples: User login attempts, API calls, service errors.
- Traces: Distributed request tracking across services.
Example: Following a request through multiple microservices in a cloud-native app.
Tools and Ecosystem
Many cloud providers and third-party platforms support telemetry:
Cloud-native tools: Amazon CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Google Cloud Operations Suite.
Open-source standards: Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry.
Commercial observability platforms: Datadog, New Relic, Dynatrace.