Many developers think observability means "add more logs."

Logging is important.

But observability is broader.

The Three Common Pillars

Observability is commonly discussed through:

Logs Metrics Traces

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Each answers different questions.

Logs

Logs tell you about events.

Example:

2026-08-14 14:20:03 Order 12345 payment failed

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Useful, but often isolated.

Metrics

Metrics measure numerical behavior.

For example:

HTTP requests/sec CPU usage Memory usage Error rate Request latency

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You might discover:

95th percentile latency = 2.4 seconds

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That tells you something is happening at scale.

Traces

Distributed tracing follows a request across multiple components.

For example:

API Gateway ↓ User Service ↓ Order Service ↓ Payment Service ↓ Database

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If the request takes five seconds,…