# Observability | | **Observability** is a measure of how well internal states of a system can be inferred from knowledge of its external outputs. | | ---- | ---- | | | wikipedia:: [Observability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observability) | | | url:: [What is Observability? \| IBM](https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/observability) | > [!summary]- Wikipedia Synopsis > **Observability** is a measure of how well internal states of a system can be inferred from knowledge of its external outputs. > > In control theory, the observability and controllability of a linear system are mathematical duals. > > The concept of observability was introduced by the Hungarian-American engineer Rudolf E. Kálmán for linear dynamic systems. A dynamical system designed to estimate the state of a system from measurements of the outputs is called a state observer or simply an observer for that system. [What is Observability? A Beginner's Guide | Splunk](https://www.splunk.com/en_us/data-insider/what-is-observability.html) > for an organization's infrastructure, this means instrumenting all compute > resources, apps, and services with > "sensors" that faithfully report metrics from > those components. It also means making those metrics available on a central, > easily accessible platform, where observers can bring them together to reconstruct > a full picture of the system's status and operation. > Observability dovetails with the devops movement, as it represents a cultural > shift away from siloed, piecemeal views into critical systems toward a detailed, > comprehensive view of the infrastructure that is shared across the organization. ## Sources - [DevOps Observability from Code to Cloud - The New Stack](https://thenewstack.io/devops-observability-from-code-to-cloud/) - [Observability Products & Solutions | Splunk](https://www.splunk.com/en_us/products/observability.html?301=/en_us/devops.html) - [Observability Matters. But Are You Observing the Right Things?  - DevOps.com](https://devops.com/observability-matters-but-are-you-observing-the-right-things/) - [Observability vs Monitoring: A DevOps perspective](https://israelo.io/blog/observability-vs-monitoring/) - [New DevOps Engineer looking for advice for monitoring and alerting : r/kubernetes](https://www.reddit.com/r/kubernetes/comments/rr24md/new_devops_engineer_looking_for_advice_for/)