Nurturing Observability with Open Source

Observability means collecting, analyzing and observing data from systems and applications through traces, metrics and logs. OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Jaeger and FluentD represent the latest generations of observability frameworks and tools. OpenTelemetry combines previous open source projects, OpenCensus and OpenTracing, into one standard implementation. Prometheus is an open source solution for monitoring metrics. Jaeger is an open source solution for distributed trace monitoring and is useful for root cause analysis. FluentD is a popular open source solution for log collection and structuring.

While these projects may seem new, there are significant similarities between today’s solutions for observability and older solutions for monitoring data networks. The workflow is still the same – produce the data, gather the data, analyze the data and finally understand the data. The old solutions used proprietary products. Today open source is replacing all of the earlier solutions.

In my current role, I’m leading the development of projects that impact OpenTelemetry metrics and logging APIs and SDKs. The APIs and SDKs are for C++, Go, JavaScript and other languages. You can read more about the C++ metrics API and SDK in this post. I’m also leading several projects for contributing to Prometheus and Cortex. Here are a couple of posts.

Building a C++ Prometheus Exporter for OpenTelemetry

Testing the OpenTelemetry C++ Prometheus Exporter

It’s a great time to be working on OpenTelemetry! Stay tuned for more observability project updates.

Open Distro for Elasticsearch Version Update 0.9.0

Open Distro for Elasticsearch version 0.9.0 supports Elasticsearch 6.7.1 and Kibana 6.7.1.

Its always useful to me as an engineer to track version compatibility. There is a useful matrix now available on the project website here.

Detailed release notes for version 0.9.0 can be found here.

More downloads now available by popular community request include –

1. Open Distro for Elasticsearch security artifacts on Maven Central

2. Individual plugin zips

Other release details can be found here.

March 11 2019: Open Distro for Elasticsearch 0.7.0 Rolls Out

Excited to have helped roll out Open Distro for Elasticsearch! A fully open source Apache 2 licensed distribution for Elasticsearch, Kibana with cool features including alerting, performance analyzer, security, SQL, JDBC support and more. Open Distro v 0.7.0 supports Elasticsearch 6.5.4

Get involved, download and contribute to this cool, shiny new open source project!

Read more about Open Distro here.

The Internationalization Working Group at W3C and Indic Language Task Force IIP

Since 1994, the W3C has been defining open standards for the Web such as CSS, SVG, and XML. These, and many others, have driven interoperability across vendor platforms and led to the rapid evolution of the Web to become more interactive and globally accessible. Amazon joined the W3C in Fall 2018. I’m proud to have been one of the three initial contributors participating in the W3C standards working groups from Amazon.

Internationalization Working Group at W3C

The Internationalization (I18N) Working Group has a mission to enable the Web to support universal access by users across regions, languages, and cultures. The working group is chaired by Amazon’s Senior Principal Engineer and internationalization expert Addison Phillips. The Indic language task force within this group, is chaired by Alolita Sharma, a Principal Technologist and internationalization expert at Amazon. You can follow the activities of the internationalization working group online and on Twitter @webi18n.

Read more here.

Kickstarting Open Source Contribution to Spinnaker

Spinnaker is a popular cloud-based continuous delivery platform for releasing software changes rapidly and reliably. Spinnaker makes it easier for developers to focus on writing code without having to worry about the underlying cloud infrastructure. It integrates seamlessly with tools such as Jenkins and Travis CI. Spinnaker provides the flexibility to deploy applications on virtual machines running in the cloud or in your container platform of choice. Read more details about open source contributions to the project here.

Find out more about how you can contribute to the Spinnaker Project here.

Hello Cleveland From PyCon

PyCon has been the Python community’s conference since 2003. Each year, PyCon is held in multiple regions across the world. The 2018 largest PyCon was held in Cleveland, Ohio. The conference had five concurrent tracks with talks, tutorials, lightning talks, and developer sprints during the week of May 9-17 2018. There were also several community-focused events including a job fair, an expo, a PyLadies lunch and charity auction, a Python language summit, and an education summit. Read more here.

At the Open Source Leadership Summit

The Linux Foundation’s Open Source Leadership Summit 2018 (OSLS) was held in Sonoma, California. The summit offered a great opportunity for collaboration, learning, and sharing. I presented at OSLS 2018 on the growth of open source at Amazon to an enthusiastic audience keen to learn how Amazon is expanding its open source footprint. Read more about it here.