Enroll Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/monitoring-and-observability-for-development-and-devops
In today’s fast-paced digital world, ensuring applications run smoothly and efficiently is paramount for both developers and DevOps professionals. Bugs, slow performance, and unexpected downtime can significantly impact user experience and business success. This is where continuous monitoring and observability come into play. I recently completed Coursera’s “Monitoring and Observability for Development and DevOps” course, and I can confidently recommend it to anyone looking to deepen their understanding and practical skills in this critical area.
The course provides a comprehensive overview, starting with the fundamental concepts of application monitoring. It clearly defines what monitoring entails – identifying, measuring, and evaluating application effectiveness – and contrasts it with observability, which focuses on how well an application’s performance can be understood through the data it generates. The introduction to the four Golden Signals of Monitoring (latency, traffic, errors, and saturation) is particularly valuable, offering a structured approach to understanding application health.
One of the strengths of this course is its practical approach to monitoring systems and techniques. It delves into synthetic monitoring, explaining its importance and introducing popular tools like Prometheus and Grafana. Learning how to use Grafana to visualize monitoring data through charts, graphs, and timelines was a key takeaway, making complex data easily digestible. The course also covers the crucial aspect of alerting, detailing different types of alerts, from metrics and logs to smart detection.
The module on logging methodologies and tools was equally insightful. It explored the benefits of log monitoring, introduced distributed logging and tracing techniques, and discussed best practices for log formatting, parsing, and retention. The practical introduction to Mezmo provided hands-on experience with a real-world logging platform.
Furthermore, the course thoroughly explains the concept of observability, including its three pillars and its application in cloud-native environments. It touches upon important topics like sampling in logging and the significance of telemetry in application development, differentiating it from distributed tracing. Tools like Instana are introduced, offering practical insights into their use cases.
What truly sets this course apart is its final project. The hands-on experience with Instana, setting up an account, creating dashboards, and monitoring a real application (Robotshop) using Docker, solidifies the theoretical knowledge gained throughout the course. This practical application is invaluable for building confidence and competence.
Overall, “Monitoring and Observability for Development and DevOps” is an excellent resource for anyone involved in application development and operations. It provides a strong theoretical foundation coupled with practical, hands-on experience, equipping learners with the essential skills to ensure their applications are robust, performant, and observable. I highly recommend it.
Enroll Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/monitoring-and-observability-for-development-and-devops