More than Observation｜Alibaba Cloud Observability Suite Officially Released

With the implementation of enterprise digital transformation, business growth and IT infrastructure are more and more closely related. Cloud native not only reshapes enterprise IT architecture, but also changes operation and maintenance systems and processes. The concept of "observable" came into being and became an important standard for measuring the level of enterprise IT governance. From problem location and risk identification to cost management, business continuity governance and even business growth, observable technologies and data are relied upon. It can be said that observability plays an important role in the era of digital transformation and cloud native.

On June 22, the first Alibaba Cloud Observable Technology Summit, jointly organized by Alibaba Cloud and Grafana Labs, hosted by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology as the guiding unit, and hosted by the cloud native application platform and Tianchi platform, kicked off. Ding Yu, head of Alibaba Cloud's intelligent cloud-native application platform, officially released the Alibaba Cloud Observability Suite (ACOS), making the value of observable data more than just observations.

At the same time, around the theme of "observability and open source", the summit invited AIA Life, AIFLU F6 corporate leaders, Grafana, and Prometheus project leaders to present rich and practical reference for the audience to share and discuss .

Based on its own practice, Alibaba Cloud's judgment on observable trends

As one of the first pioneers in China to practice microservice architecture and DevOps on a large scale, Alibaba Cloud believes that as an important part of connecting infrastructure downwards and carrying services upwards, applications are the best observation perspective in the cloud-native era, and have the following trends :

Observability becomes a prerequisite for the release of cloud-native dividends

Enterprises' requirements for operation and maintenance are no longer limited to passively discovering problems, but more timely, active and accurate discovery of problems and insight into the causes, providing decision-making basis for pre-event prevention, in-process processing, and post-event review. At the same time, the types of observable data related to applications are constantly enriched, and indicators, logs, events, and links are connected to each other, and the business value behind them is continuously released.

The trend of fragmented observation has become a reality, and excellent open source projects have become the standard

With the popularity of application orchestration technology with Kubernetes as the core, observable scenarios and technologies are flourishing, decentralized observation, and fragmented observation have become a trend. Among them, excellent open source observable standards and implementations such as Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry have become mainstream.

Observability is the core element to ensure safe production and business continuity

More than just big promotion guarantees and daily rotation, how to build observable capabilities that meet business needs around their actual business needs and ensure business continuity has become a business challenge for many SRE teams.

More than just observation, Ali Observable Kit is officially released

Alibaba Cloud officially released the Alibaba Cloud Observability Suite (ACOS) on June 22. Alibaba Cloud Observability Suite revolves around Prometheus service, Grafana service, and link tracking service to form an observable data layer for indicator storage analysis, link storage analysis, and integration of heterogeneous data sources. At the same time, through standard PromQL and SQL, it provides a data dashboard Demonstration, alerting and data exploration capabilities. Give data value to different scenarios such as IT cost management, enterprise risk management, intelligent operation and maintenance, and business continuity assurance, so that observable data can truly be more than just observation.

Different from many third-party services or open-source self-built solutions, Alibaba Cloud Observability Suite realizes multi-level connections, comprehensively breaks down data silos, and taps the business value behind data.

Upwards to form a unified observation interface compatible with open source standards

It is bidirectionally connected to Alibaba Cloud's self-developed observable products such as application-level monitoring (APM), front-end experience monitoring (RUM), K8s monitoring based on eBPF technology, cloud monitoring, etc. Standard (PromQL) and unified open interface (Grafana) are provided to users, which is convenient for users' re-integration and secondary processing. ARMS also fully supports the OpenTelemetry SDK for custom embedding enhancements.

Connect to Alibaba Cloud observable data storage products

Unify observable data storage such as log service SLS and Elasticsearch service, as well as observable data scattered in heterogeneous data storage facilities (such as Clickhouse, Lindorm, RDS), and realize seamless exploration between observable data source management and heterogeneous data .

Horizontally connect all Alibaba Cloud application control products and middleware products

All Alibaba Cloud application control (EDAS, SAE, ACK, FC, etc.) and middleware products fully embrace open source observability standards and connect with observability suites. At present, more than 50 Alibaba Cloud cloud services have been observed through the Prometheus standard.

Embrace the open source ecology and vigorously develop ecological partners

As a leader in the domestic observable field, Alibaba Cloud does not try to solve all problems with one-stop products or solutions. Alibaba Cloud actively embraces the open source ecosystem and provides Prometheus monitoring services, Grafana services, and link tracking services compatible with mainstream open source protocols such as OpenTelemetry and Skywalking. Together, they form a new generation of Alibaba Cloud observability suites. Use standardized technology to connect inventory and fragment observable data downward, and help customers to form their own unique observable solutions without vendor lock-in to achieve real customer success.

While embracing open source standards, we actively feed back the observable open source community. Arthas, a Java diagnostic open source tool, has become one of the most popular open source tools in the observable field. The self-developed high-performance observable data collector iLogtail has gradually become a world-class open source observable data collector with the efforts of many developers.

In order to provide more abundant, high-quality, low-threshold observable services and capabilities, Alibaba Cloud vigorously develops ecological partners. Since 2017, it has cooperated with Elastic company to create a standard, reliable and low-cost full-observation scenario storage and analysis product Elasticsearch. In the past year, Alibaba Cloud has reached strategic cooperation with Grafana Labs, Brilliance Data, Harmony Cloud, Kangaroo Cloud and other enterprises, seamlessly integrated with Alibaba Cloud's self-developed observable system, and brought excellent products and technical services that lead the industry standards to Alibaba. Cloud's massive customer base.

Alibaba Cloud Observability Suite is widely recognized by the industry

Alibaba Cloud Observable has been highly recognized by domestic and foreign industry organizations for its complete product capabilities, good ecological integration capabilities, and excellent cost advantages. Alibaba Cloud's application real-time monitoring service ARMS has obtained the first batch of advanced-level certification for observable products from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology this year. At the same time, Alibaba Cloud has entered the Gartner APM and Observable Magic Quadrant for two consecutive years, and this year it has become the only Chinese vendor selected.

In the era where everything is a cloud, observability makes cloud computing easier and more efficient, and it also maximizes the business value of observable data. "Observation" has become an essential core competency for every IT person. More than just observations, observables help companies analyze, gain insights, and enable high-quality decision-making and business innovation. Alibaba Cloud will continue to promote the evolution and implementation of observable technologies to help enterprises truly achieve high-quality digital transformation and innovation.

Click here to view the live replay of the Alibaba Cloud Observable Technology Summit.