Sources

Authoritative Sources

The definitions, principles, and practices in this pack are grounded in the following primary and widely recognised sources. Where a concept has a canonical originator (for example the golden signals or the USE method), the original or maintained reference is cited.

Standards and Specifications

  • OpenTelemetry Specification (signals, API, SDK, data model). https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/otel/
  • OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) Specification. https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/otlp/
  • OpenTelemetry Semantic Conventions. https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/semconv/
  • W3C Trace Context Recommendation (traceparent / tracestate). https://www.w3.org/TR/trace-context/
  • W3C Baggage Specification. https://www.w3.org/TR/baggage/

OpenTelemetry Documentation

  • OpenTelemetry - Official Documentation. https://opentelemetry.io/docs/
  • OpenTelemetry Collector - Documentation. https://opentelemetry.io/docs/collector/
  • OpenTelemetry Sampling (head-based and tail-based). https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/sampling/
  • OpenTelemetry Project (CNCF). https://www.cncf.io/projects/opentelemetry/

Metrics, Querying, and Storage

  • Prometheus - Official Documentation. https://prometheus.io/docs/introduction/overview/
  • Prometheus Metric Types (counter, gauge, histogram, summary). https://prometheus.io/docs/concepts/metric_types/
  • Querying with PromQL. https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/querying/basics/
  • Prometheus Histograms and Quantiles. https://prometheus.io/docs/practices/histograms/

Reliability Engineering (SLI/SLO/Error Budgets)

  • Google Site Reliability Engineering Book. https://sre.google/sre-book/table-of-contents/
  • Service Level Objectives - Google SRE Book, Chapter 4. https://sre.google/sre-book/service-level-objectives/
  • Monitoring Distributed Systems (the four golden signals) - Google SRE Book, Chapter 6. https://sre.google/sre-book/monitoring-distributed-systems/
  • The Site Reliability Workbook - Implementing SLOs and Alerting on SLOs. https://sre.google/workbook/implementing-slos/

Methods and Foundational References

  • The USE Method - Brendan Gregg. https://www.brendangregg.com/usemethod.html
  • The RED Method - Tom Wilkie / Grafana Labs. https://grafana.com/blog/2018/08/02/the-red-method-how-to-instrument-your-services/
  • Three Pillars vs MELT and observability concepts - Grafana Labs documentation. https://grafana.com/docs/

Visualisation and Tooling

  • Grafana - Official Documentation. https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/
  • Jaeger - Distributed Tracing Documentation. https://www.jaegertracing.io/docs/
  • OpenMetrics Specification (exposition format). https://github.com/OpenObservability/OpenMetrics/blob/main/specification/OpenMetrics.md