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Software Telemetry
Software Telemetry is a guide to operating the telemetry systems that monitor and maintain your applications. It takes a big picture view of telemetry, teaching you to manage your logging, metrics, and events as a complete end-to-end ecosystem. You’ll learn the base architecture that underpins any software telemetry system, allowing you to easily integrate new systems into your existing infrastructure, and how these systems work under the hood. Throughout, you’ll follow three very different companies to see how telemetry techniques impact a greenfield startup, a large legacy enterprise, and a non-technical organization without any in-house development. You’ll even cover how software telemetry is used by court processes—ensuring that when your first telemetry subpoena arrives, there’s no reason to panic!
560 pages, ebook
Published August 31, 2021
12 people are currently reading
61 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 19, 2021
2.5 stars. Only 2.5 stars.
Why so?
The author does quite well when it comes to presenting the conceptual foundations of Telemetry, so I was quite hyped after the first chapter. However, then I've found out that it was the best part of the book ... Because the rest is definitely repetitive, too verbose, very general - simply ... boring. It's not that the author was slacking - the chapters are well polished, coherent, the language is comprehensible. The problem is the lack of actual content ... It feels like the author had a contract to create X chapters, while there was real "meat" for only 1 ...
Appendixes are not bad, because there's at least some more practical advice there (but again, high-level and generic - "a single Google query" proficiency level).
But maybe it had to be like that? Maybe there's simply nothing more to be written about Telemetry. That is NOT correct. There are interesting projects like Open Telemetry (https://opentelemetry.io/), there are built-in solutions of major cloud providers, there are different paradigms like PULL-vs-PUSH approach to metrics. This book could definitely be made more interesting. But it isn't.
2.5 stars, because it introduces important (and correct) mental models. And it's not misleading. And the patterns (even if trivial) are useful. A big disappointment though.
Why so?
The author does quite well when it comes to presenting the conceptual foundations of Telemetry, so I was quite hyped after the first chapter. However, then I've found out that it was the best part of the book ... Because the rest is definitely repetitive, too verbose, very general - simply ... boring. It's not that the author was slacking - the chapters are well polished, coherent, the language is comprehensible. The problem is the lack of actual content ... It feels like the author had a contract to create X chapters, while there was real "meat" for only 1 ...
Appendixes are not bad, because there's at least some more practical advice there (but again, high-level and generic - "a single Google query" proficiency level).
But maybe it had to be like that? Maybe there's simply nothing more to be written about Telemetry. That is NOT correct. There are interesting projects like Open Telemetry (https://opentelemetry.io/), there are built-in solutions of major cloud providers, there are different paradigms like PULL-vs-PUSH approach to metrics. This book could definitely be made more interesting. But it isn't.
2.5 stars, because it introduces important (and correct) mental models. And it's not misleading. And the patterns (even if trivial) are useful. A big disappointment though.
May 18, 2024
This book is over 500 pages and for a bad reason. It's excessively verbose and repetitive. But if you are patient enough you can learn about all things logging and not only.
It covers the main types of telemetry, their pros and cons, use cases and audiences, optimization hints, discusses different architectures, decoupling techniques including queues and streams, handling legacy systems, multi-tenancy, structured logging and security, best practices and trending technologies, phew...
Then again, it covers the cost/feature balance and its change as the company grows and matures, driving the progression through different solutions, from SaaS to self-hosted to custom software. And you'll never be short of examples. Yes, the author has vast knowledge in the field and often speaks from her experience.
Yet the book isn't overly technical, and rightly so. The know-how is always a few clicks away if you know what to look for and that's precisely where this book shines. Know your telemetry options and know them well! Definitely recommended for the folks who deal with logs and metrics.
It covers the main types of telemetry, their pros and cons, use cases and audiences, optimization hints, discusses different architectures, decoupling techniques including queues and streams, handling legacy systems, multi-tenancy, structured logging and security, best practices and trending technologies, phew...
Then again, it covers the cost/feature balance and its change as the company grows and matures, driving the progression through different solutions, from SaaS to self-hosted to custom software. And you'll never be short of examples. Yes, the author has vast knowledge in the field and often speaks from her experience.
Yet the book isn't overly technical, and rightly so. The know-how is always a few clicks away if you know what to look for and that's precisely where this book shines. Know your telemetry options and know them well! Definitely recommended for the folks who deal with logs and metrics.
November 18, 2021
Very shallow, with many redundant code examples and screenshots.
Even if you put together 1-2 pages summaries from the 18 chapters, it'll be a generic, repetitive article that does not excuse 560 pages.
Even if you put together 1-2 pages summaries from the 18 chapters, it'll be a generic, repetitive article that does not excuse 560 pages.
March 30, 2021
So you think you know Telemetry? Grab a copy of this book to discover what you have missed for so long. Some of it could be very fundamental to the concepts of telemetry that you just overlooked. This at least was my experience and am so thankful to the author for sharing her knowledge and experience so nicely.
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August 23, 2023not so helpful - did not finish
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews