Reliability and observability glossary
Understand service health, incidents, and the telemetry used to investigate production systems. Connect reliability outcomes to engineering decisions.
All terms
140 termsQuorum
Quorum is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilityReadiness gate
Readiness gate is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilityReadiness probe
Readiness probe is a test of whether a service is prepared to receive traffic or work now.
Reliability and observabilityReal user monitoring
Real user monitoring is performance and interaction measurement collected from actual user sessions.
Reliability and observabilityRecovery drill
Recovery drill is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilityRequest cancellation
Request cancellation is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilityResilience budget
Resilience budget is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilityResource attribute
Resource attribute is metadata identifying the entity that produced telemetry, such as service, host, process, or environment.
Reliability and observabilityResource exhaustion
Resource exhaustion is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilityRestore validation
Restore validation is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilityRetryable error
Retryable error is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilityService level agreement
Service level agreement is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilityService level credit
Service level credit is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilityService level indicator
A service level indicator, or SLI, is a carefully defined quantitative measure of a service behavior that matters to users. Common examples include availability, request latency, error rate, and throughput.
Reliability and observabilityService level objective
A service level objective, or SLO, is a target value or range for a service level indicator. It states the level of service a team aims to provide over a defined period and measurement boundary.
Reliability and observabilityService map
Service map is a representation of services and observed communication paths between them.
Reliability and observabilityShared fate
Shared fate is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilitySingle point of failure
Single point of failure is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilitySLO alerting
SLO alerting is creation of notifications from measured service objectives and remaining error budget.
Reliability and observabilitySpan
Span is a timed unit of work within a trace with operation, timing, status, attributes, and events.
Reliability and observabilitySpan attribute
Span attribute is a key-value property attached to a span to provide searchable operation context.
Reliability and observabilitySpan event
Span event is a timestamped annotation attached to a span to record something during its lifetime.
Reliability and observabilitySpan ID
Span ID is the identifier for one span within a trace that distinguishes it from its parent and siblings.
Reliability and observabilitySplit brain
Split brain is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilityStartup probe
Startup probe is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilityStructured logging
Structured logging is writing log records as named fields instead of only free-form text.
Reliability and observabilitySummary metric
Summary metric is a client-side statistical summary of observations, commonly count, sum, and selected quantiles.
Reliability and observabilitySynthetic monitoring
Synthetic monitoring is scheduled scripted requests or workflows run from controlled conditions.
Reliability and observabilityTail-based sampling
Tail-based sampling is a sampling decision made after later spans and overall trace outcome are available.
Reliability and observabilityTelemetry cost
Telemetry cost is the compute, network, storage, query, and operational expense of observability data.
Reliability and observabilityTelemetry signal
Telemetry signal is a distinct form of machine-generated evidence such as a metric, log, trace, or profile.
Reliability and observabilityTermination drain
Termination drain is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilityThreshold alert
Threshold alert is an alert evaluated when a signal crosses a numeric boundary for a defined duration.
Reliability and observabilityTrace context
Trace context is the small set of identifiers and flags passed between components so telemetry can associate an operation with its trace and parent span. It allows distributed work to be represented as one connected execution.
Reliability and observabilityTrace ID
Trace ID is the identifier shared by spans belonging to one distributed operation.
Reliability and observabilityTrace sampling
Trace sampling is selection of traces or spans to retain from a larger set of observed operations.
Reliability and observabilityTrace signal
Trace signal is evidence that records the path and timing of one operation across services, queues, and databases.
Reliability and observabilityTrace waterfall
Trace waterfall is a time-aligned view showing span nesting, overlap, waiting, and duration.
Reliability and observabilityUser-visible error
User-visible error is a reliability concept used to describe a specific condition, control, or decision in the operation of software services.
Reliability and observabilityWhite-box monitoring
White-box monitoring is monitoring based on internal measurements such as resource use, queues, errors, and latency.
Reliability and observability