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Evidence-Ready Observability: Logs, Metrics, Traces, and Alerts

Minimum viable observability that supports incident response and accountability.

Observability for operations and compliance

Regulated customers want proof that you can detect, respond, and recover. Observability provides that proof when it’s designed intentionally.

The minimum viable observability stack

  • Logs: centralized, searchable, retained with lifecycle rules.
  • Metrics: service health, latency, saturation, error rates.
  • Tracing: for distributed apps where you need fast root cause.
  • Alerts: few, high-signal, with clear runbooks.

Evidence-ready patterns

  • Immutable log storage + access auditing
  • Standard dashboards per service (“golden signals”)
  • Incident tickets linked to alert IDs
  • Monthly reports exported automatically

Common mistakes

  • Collecting everything and alerting on nothing.
  • Dashboards no one owns.
  • Retention too short to satisfy oversight.

Next steps

We can stand up a lean observability baseline and connect it to incident response so you’re both resilient and audit-ready.

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