Observability for small teams: traces, logs and metrics on a budget
NEO Campus Editorial12 March 20266 min read
Observability used to be enterprise-only. With OpenTelemetry and a handful of OSS backends, a two-person team can have first-class visibility.
Start with structured logs
Logs in JSON, with a request ID on every line, get you 80% of the way. Grep is still a legitimate tool.
Add traces when logs are not enough
When a request crosses three services, traces become indispensable. OpenTelemetry is the standard; pick any backend that speaks OTLP.
Metrics for SLOs
A handful of metrics tied to user-visible SLOs beats dashboards full of vanity numbers.
