Series

Observability

From Grafana and New Relic on Kubernetes to OpenTelemetry and CloudWatch: measuring what matters in production.

3 parts · 10 min total reading
  1. 1
    InfrastructureGrafanaNew Relicobservability

    Observability in Production: Grafana, New Relic, and What Actually Matters

    After running production services across AWS and Kubernetes, I've developed strong opinions about what monitoring actually helps during incidents. Here's the setup that's worked for us.

    5 Nov 2018 · 2 min read
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  2. 2
    InfrastructureOpenTelemetryobservabilityCloudWatch

    OpenTelemetry in Practice: Instrument Once, Switch Observability Vendors with Config

    Observability vendor lock-in rarely comes from the dashboards. It comes from proprietary agents and SDKs scattered through your code. OpenTelemetry and the OTel Collector let you instrument once and route telemetry anywhere. Here's a practical setup.

    19 May 2026 · 3 min read
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  3. 3
    InfrastructureCloudWatchobservabilityGrafana

    CloudWatch as Your Observability Backbone: Native Dashboards, Grafana, or Something Else?

    If you run on AWS, CloudWatch is already collecting your metrics and logs whether you like it or not. The real question is whether to build your observability on top of it, pipe it into Grafana, or pay for a third-party platform. The answer depends heavily on stage and budget.

    18 Aug 2026 · 5 min read
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