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

Jamie Riedesel is a staff engineer at Dropbox. She has over twenty years of experience in IT, working in government, education, legacy companies, and startups. She has specialized in DevOps for the past decade, running distributed systems in public clouds, getting over workplace trauma, and designing software telemetry architectures.