ObservCrew,🙌 

This week’s all about listening to what our systems are really saying. Distributed apps are getting chatty, AI’s shaking up 5G networks, and open-source tools keep leveling up. Let’s dive in, this week there no fluff as the new job is kicking my butt 👍.  

TLDR:
🔄 Logs alone? Not cutting it for distributed apps  
🎯 Grafana Mimir’s reliability glow-up  
🤖 Fabrix.ai’s AI twist on 5G monitoring  
📊 New Relic’s video stream insights
💡 Nokia’s real-world playbook for observability

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THIS WEEKS SPOTLIGHT

We've all found ourselves in that familiar situation, gazing intently at logs as if they were mystical tea leaves, attempting to decipher the reasons behind an application's erratic behavior. It's a common challenge we all face, where understanding the root cause of issues can often feel like trying to solve a complex puzzle with it face down.

So when i read NivelEpsilon’s latest piece this week, their cool analogy really resonated with me. They likened their approach to observability is like overseeing a bustling city. In they view, these systems are not just static entities but dynamic environments that require constant attention, they need traffic cops (metrics), street cameras (traces), and neighborhood watch groups (context).

Thier piece also nails why we’re hitting walls with log-only approaches. I like their take to how distributed apps hide patterns in the spaces between services. Check out their full breakdown here (8 mins).  

WHAT COOKING IN TOOLS

Grafana Mimir quietly rebuilt its engine. The redesign focuses on reliability over flashy features, think better error handling and possibly smoother scaling. Handy for teams juggling metric overload. Peek under the hood (7 mins).  

New Relic’s new video streaming monitor feels timely. With everyone binging 4K content, their tool maps buffer times to CDN performance. Not revolutionary, but practical for media teams. Details here (5 mins).  

MARKET MOVES

Elastic’s stretching beyond search into observability and security. Their play? Be the Swiss Army knife for data teams. Whether that’s helpful or messy? Jury’s out. Morningstar’s take (6 mins).  

Fabrix.ai’s bringing AI to 5G network monitoring. At MWC 2025, they’ll demo how ML predicts tower congestion. Skeptical? Same. But worth a look if you’re in telecom. Sneak peek (4 mins).

FOR THE BUILDERS

Tired of piecing together telemetry? OpenTelemetry’s ASP.NET Core guide cuts the boilerplate. Ottorino Bruni shows how to trace minimal APIs without drowning in config. Code walkthrough (10 mins).

WHO’S NAILING IT

ECS just bagged Elastic’s top partner award for securing U.S. federal systems. Their win? Using observability to map attack surfaces faster. Case study (5 mins).

Nokia shared their observability playbook, no hype, just how they monitor global 5G rollouts. Spoiler: It involves a lot of custom dashboards. Their strategy (7 mins).

THINKERS TO FOLLOW

In this podcast Shane Hastie talks to Courtney Nash about her research on the unintended consequences of automation in software, the importance of learning from incidents and maintaining human expertise in complex system. Grab a listen InfoQ talk (15 mins).