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Stories, guides, and lessons from the world of observability

Last9 Named a Gartner® Cool Vendor in AI for SRE and Observability

Last9 Named a Gartner® Cool Vendor in AI for SRE and Observability

Gartner recognizes Last9 in their latest Cool Vendor report for unified telemetry and agentic SDK—moving teams from reactive monitoring to proactive ops.

Nishant Modak

Nishant Modak

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Istio, Linkerd and Envoy pods with sidecar proxies cabled together and to a meter

Service Mesh Observability: Istio, Linkerd and Envoy Metrics

Service mesh observability guide: the metrics Istio, Linkerd and Envoy proxies emit, what ambient mode changes, and why tracing still needs app changes.

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Sejal Pandey

Sejal Pandey

A switchboard patched into three tool units, with the middle unit's lamp glowing lime

MCP Server Monitoring: Tracing Tool Calls with OpenTelemetry

MCP server monitoring guide: spans, metrics and logs to record for tool calls, why failed tools look healthy, and how to trace requests from client to server.

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Sejal Pandey

Sejal Pandey

A handheld meter probing the outside of a sealed box marked with the Prometheus logo

Prometheus Blackbox Exporter: Setup, Probes and Alerts

Set up the Prometheus Blackbox Exporter: install it, write HTTP, TCP, DNS and ICMP modules, relabel scrape targets, and alert on probe_success and SSL expiry.

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Sejal Pandey

Sejal Pandey

An isometric filing cabinet for the vector index, its middle drawer lit lime, cabled to a retro CRT whose screen shows a trace waterfall with the retrieval span highlighted

RAG Pipeline Observability: What to Trace at Every Stage

RAG pipeline observability guide: the spans, attributes and metrics to record for embedding, retrieval, reranking and generation, plus evals for bad answers.

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Sejal Pandey

Sejal Pandey

Isometric line drawing of a conveyor of message cubes feeding three function units, one still starting up in dashed outline, with the two running units marked with the Azure Functions logo and cabled to a meter whose lime screen shows a needle gauge

Azure Functions Monitoring: Metrics, Logs and OpenTelemetry

Azure Functions monitoring guide: platform metrics by hosting plan, why executions go missing in Application Insights, OpenTelemetry setup and alerts.

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Sejal Pandey

Sejal Pandey

An isometric line drawing: the Amazon CloudWatch mark above a panel of twelve small gauge dials, with one cable running to a monitor whose screen glows lime with a rising line.

7 CloudWatch Alternatives for AWS Monitoring in 2026

Compare 7 Amazon CloudWatch alternatives: why custom metrics and logs get expensive, what changed in 2026, and how to move without losing AWS metrics.

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Sejal Pandey

Sejal Pandey

A tape unit with the Sumo Logic wordmark, routed through a switch to one of three destination units, with the chosen destination's screen glowing lime

7 Sumo Logic Alternatives Worth Evaluating in 2026

Compare 7 Sumo Logic alternatives for logs and observability: how each one bills for logs, where it fits, and how to migrate off Sumo Logic safely.

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Sejal Pandey

Sejal Pandey

Isometric line drawing of a control plane unit with the Kubernetes mark, cabled to three worker node trays holding pod cubes, the last one full, wired to a meter whose lime screen shows three rising bars

AWS EKS Monitoring: Control Plane, Nodes and Pod IPs

AWS EKS monitoring guide: free control plane metrics, control plane logs, node health, VPC CNI IP exhaustion, and which alerts to set first.

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Sejal Pandey

Sejal Pandey

Isometric line drawing of a short queue of request cubes waiting at a load balancer box, cabled to three server racks and to a meter whose lime screen shows a needle gauge

HAProxy Monitoring: Stats, Prometheus Metrics and Alerts

HAProxy monitoring guide: the stats page and socket, the built-in Prometheus exporter, the metrics that matter, why queue time averages mislead, and alerts.

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Sejal Pandey

Sejal Pandey