--- title: Observability Crash Course: Logs, Metrics, Traces Explained description: A comprehensive walkthrough of observability for distributed systems, using a ride-share backend as the running example. Covers the difference between... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/sypyx660x twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Observability Crash Course: Logs, Metrics, Traces Explained | daily.dev og:description: A comprehensive walkthrough of observability for distributed systems, using a ride-share backend as the running example. Covers the difference between... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/sypyx660x og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/SYpYX660X.png og:image:alt: Post cover image og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Observability Crash Course: Logs, Metrics, Traces Explained **[Joud Awad](https://daily.dev/sources/iac4jsbu0lv8wbsc85fsh)** · [@joudawad](https://daily.dev/joudawad) · 179 upvotes · 13 comments ## Summary A comprehensive walkthrough of observability for distributed systems, using a ride-share backend as the running example. Covers the difference between monitoring and observability, then explains logs (structured logging), metrics (counters, gauges, histograms, four golden signals, RED/USE), and traces (spans, context propagation, W3C Trace Context, async messaging with span links). Shows how OpenTelemetry unifies all three signals with a vendor-neutral standard, including the collector, OTLP, semantic conventions, auto vs manual instrumentation, and sampling strategies (head vs tail). Also covers cardinality pitfalls, SLIs/SLOs/SLAs, error budgets, burn-rate alerting, service maps from traces, eBPF for zero-code instrumentation, continuous profiling with flame graphs, and real user monitoring (Core Web Vitals). Concludes with a full open-source stack: OpenTelemetry Collector, Tempo, Loki, Prometheus, and Grafana. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@epicuser** · 3 upvotes > Great share for this week 👏 **@jad85** · 3 upvotes > Thank you for this great video, another great topic covered 🙏 **@agustinbarrientos** · 3 upvotes > Great observability walkthrough, thanks! The ride-share example keeps logs, metrics, and traces in one story. **@gertoska** · 2 upvotes > Thanks for sharing! **@yossuf** · 2 upvotes > looks intersting ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Don’t just attend KubeCon \+ CloudNativeCon, Merge Forward your experience\!](https://daily.dev/posts/don-t-just-attend-kubecon-cloudnativecon-merge-forward-your-experience--l0rpp73x8) · CNCF · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Announcing H2 2026 KCDs](https://daily.dev/posts/announcing-h2-2026-kcds-m96goajm1) · CNCF · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Two months of Open Community Groups](https://daily.dev/posts/two-months-of-open-community-groups-asf52zhbs) · CNCF · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#devops](https://daily.dev/tags/devops), [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#observability](https://daily.dev/tags/observability), [#opentelemetry](https://daily.dev/tags/opentelemetry) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/sypyx660x) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https://daily.dev/posts/sypyx660x","headline":"Observability Crash Course: Logs, Metrics, Traces Explained","text":"Shared: Observability Crash Course: Logs, Metrics, Traces Explained","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/sypyx660x","datePublished":"2026-08-03T15:30:26.498Z","dateModified":"2026-08-05T16:20:03.470Z","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Joud Awad","url":"https://daily.dev/joudawad","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--dOB9RaXY--/f_auto/v1773320801/avatars/avatar_iaC4JsBU0lV8wBsc85fSh?_a=BAMAMiiu0","description":"Principal Solution Architecture ","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Metalab","logo":"https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=metalab.com&sz=128"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"EndorseAction"},"userInteractionCount":81870}},"image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--HRgLpUt6--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2003","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":179},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":13}],"sharedContent":{"@type":"WebPage","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/bYoAWvKTR"},"comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"Great share for this week 👏","datePublished":"2026-08-03T15:31:43.590Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/SYpYX660X#c-CNmajnc84","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"EpicUser","url":"https://daily.dev/epicuser","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--O0TOmw4y--/f_auto/v1715772965/public/noProfile"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":3}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Thank you for this great video, another great topic covered 🙏","datePublished":"2026-08-03T15:37:38.391Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/SYpYX660X#c-FOarKftK9","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Jad","url":"https://daily.dev/jad85"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":3}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Great observability walkthrough, thanks! The ride-share example keeps logs, metrics, and traces in one story.","datePublished":"2026-08-07T13:51:41.866Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/SYpYX660X#c-UNXlbg0tn","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Agustin Barrientos","url":"https://daily.dev/agustinbarrientos","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--5ayxQnqn--/f_auto/v1788281802/avatars/avatar_wQYYVe5Tbj0NJ7C7qPoa8?_a=BAMAMicg0"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":3}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Thanks for sharing!","datePublished":"2026-08-06T06:15:09.888Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/SYpYX660X#c-NTWTHqB70","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"German Cano","url":"https://daily.dev/gertoska","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--weNtxzkh--/f_auto/v1785402804/avatars/avatar_GtoJtCje1xCLWnrbJUAO9?_a=BAMAMicg0"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"looks intersting","datePublished":"2026-08-06T23:08:29.648Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/SYpYX660X#c-iYmGEMfWB","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Yossuf","url":"https://daily.dev/yossuf","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocKtMeEMGWP2b5duFTN8jY2Toz_Gr7rutCse4e1fYVDBAkBgn_4=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2}}],"isPartOf":{"@type":"WebPage","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/iac4jsbu0lv8wbsc85fsh","name":"Joud Awad"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Joud Awad","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/iac4jsbu0lv8wbsc85fsh"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Observability Crash Course: Logs, Metrics, Traces Explained"}]} ```