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How can observability tools detect latency spikes in distributed services?
Asked on Oct 14, 2025
Answer
Observability tools can detect latency spikes in distributed services by leveraging metrics, logs, and traces to provide a comprehensive view of system performance. These tools utilize SRE golden signals — latency, traffic, errors, and saturation — to identify and analyze latency issues in real-time.
Example Concept: Observability platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, and Jaeger collect and visualize metrics, logs, and traces to monitor latency in distributed systems. By setting up alerts on latency thresholds and analyzing trace data, these tools help identify bottlenecks and latency spikes. This enables teams to quickly pinpoint the root cause of performance issues, whether they stem from network delays, inefficient code paths, or resource contention.
Additional Comment:
- Use distributed tracing to follow requests across services and identify where delays occur.
- Implement latency threshold alerts to notify teams of spikes in real-time.
- Analyze logs for error patterns that might correlate with latency issues.
- Regularly review and optimize service dependencies and resource allocations.
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