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Software Telemetry: Reliable logging and monitoring
Software Telemetry shows you how to efficiently collect, store, and analyze system and application log data so you can monitor and improve your systems.
Summary
In Software Telemetry you will learn how to:
Manage toxic telemetry and confidential records
Master multi-tenant techniques and transformation processes
Update to improve the statistical validity of your metrics and dashboards
Make software telemetry emissions easier to parse
Build easily-auditable logging systems
Prevent and handle accidental data leaks
Maintain processes for legal compliance
Justify increased spend on telemetry software
Software Telemetry teaches you best practices for operating and updating telemetry systems. These vital systems trace, log, and monitor infrastructure by observing and analyzing the events generated by the system. This practical guide is filled with techniques you can apply to any size of organization, with troubleshooting techniques for every eventuality, and methods to ensure your compliance with standards like GDPR.
About the technology
Take advantage of the data generated by your IT infrastructure! Telemetry systems provide feedback on what’s happening inside your data center and applications, so you can efficiently monitor, maintain, and audit them. This practical book guides you through instrumenting your systems, setting up centralized logging, doing distributed tracing, and other invaluable telemetry techniques.
About the book
Software Telemetry shows you how to efficiently collect, store, and analyze system and application log data so you can monitor and improve your systems. Manage the pillars of observability—logs, metrics, and traces—in an end-to-end telemetry system that integrates with your existing infrastructure. You’ll discover how software telemetry benefits both small startups and legacy enterprises. And at a time when data audits are increasingly common, you’ll appreciate the thorough coverage of legal compliance processes, so there’s no reason to panic when a discovery request arrives.
What's inside
Multi-tenant techniques and transformation processes
Toxic telemetry and confidential records
Updates to improve the statistical validity of your metrics and dashboards
Revisions that make software telemetry emissions easier to parse
About the reader
For software developers and infrastructure engineers supporting and building telemetry systems.
About the author
Jamie Riedesel is a staff engineer at Dropbox with over twenty years of experience in IT.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
PART 1 TELEMETRY SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
2 The Emitting stage: Creating and submitting telemetry
3 The Shipping stage: Moving and storing telemetry
4 The Shipping stage: Unifying diverse telemetry formats
5 The Presentation stage: Displaying telemetry
6 Marking up and enriching telemetry
7 Handling multitenancy
PART 2 USE CASES REVISITED: APPLYING ARCHITECTURE CONCEPTS
8 Growing cloud-based startup
9 Nonsoftware business
10 Long-established business IT
PART 3 TECHNIQUES FOR HANDLING TELEMETRY
11 Optimizing for regular expressions at scale
12 Standardized logging and event formats
13 Using more nonfile emitting techniques
14 Managing cardinality in telemetry
15 Ensuring telemetry integrity
16 Redacting and reprocessing telemetry
17 Building policies for telemetry retention and aggregation
18 Surviving legal processes
Summary
In Software Telemetry you will learn how to:
Manage toxic telemetry and confidential records
Master multi-tenant techniques and transformation processes
Update to improve the statistical validity of your metrics and dashboards
Make software telemetry emissions easier to parse
Build easily-auditable logging systems
Prevent and handle accidental data leaks
Maintain processes for legal compliance
Justify increased spend on telemetry software
Software Telemetry teaches you best practices for operating and updating telemetry systems. These vital systems trace, log, and monitor infrastructure by observing and analyzing the events generated by the system. This practical guide is filled with techniques you can apply to any size of organization, with troubleshooting techniques for every eventuality, and methods to ensure your compliance with standards like GDPR.
About the technology
Take advantage of the data generated by your IT infrastructure! Telemetry systems provide feedback on what’s happening inside your data center and applications, so you can efficiently monitor, maintain, and audit them. This practical book guides you through instrumenting your systems, setting up centralized logging, doing distributed tracing, and other invaluable telemetry techniques.
About the book
Software Telemetry shows you how to efficiently collect, store, and analyze system and application log data so you can monitor and improve your systems. Manage the pillars of observability—logs, metrics, and traces—in an end-to-end telemetry system that integrates with your existing infrastructure. You’ll discover how software telemetry benefits both small startups and legacy enterprises. And at a time when data audits are increasingly common, you’ll appreciate the thorough coverage of legal compliance processes, so there’s no reason to panic when a discovery request arrives.
What's inside
Multi-tenant techniques and transformation processes
Toxic telemetry and confidential records
Updates to improve the statistical validity of your metrics and dashboards
Revisions that make software telemetry emissions easier to parse
About the reader
For software developers and infrastructure engineers supporting and building telemetry systems.
About the author
Jamie Riedesel is a staff engineer at Dropbox with over twenty years of experience in IT.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
PART 1 TELEMETRY SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
2 The Emitting stage: Creating and submitting telemetry
3 The Shipping stage: Moving and storing telemetry
4 The Shipping stage: Unifying diverse telemetry formats
5 The Presentation stage: Displaying telemetry
6 Marking up and enriching telemetry
7 Handling multitenancy
PART 2 USE CASES REVISITED: APPLYING ARCHITECTURE CONCEPTS
8 Growing cloud-based startup
9 Nonsoftware business
10 Long-established business IT
PART 3 TECHNIQUES FOR HANDLING TELEMETRY
11 Optimizing for regular expressions at scale
12 Standardized logging and event formats
13 Using more nonfile emitting techniques
14 Managing cardinality in telemetry
15 Ensuring telemetry integrity
16 Redacting and reprocessing telemetry
17 Building policies for telemetry retention and aggregation
18 Surviving legal processes
885 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 21, 2021
Ratings & Reviews
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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 17, 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