Transforming IT Operations with Full Stack Observability: The Power of a Unified Approach

Discover how Full Stack Observability revolutionizes IT operations by providing real-time, unified visibility across the entire technology stack, reducing tool sprawl, and enhancing business performance with actionable insights.

AUTHOR
Hursh Chetan
POSTED ON
June 20, 2024
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Cloud
Network
Full Stack Observability

Introduction

This blog introduces the strategic value of Full Stack Observability and brings out the resulting gains of modernized & unified IT operations.  

It starts from the concern of not having a corelated & real time visibility across entire IT stack, despite having a set of tools, it goes to understand the pain of putting in several people and man-days to find accurate root cause of problem.

It helps you build a vision and roadmap to create a Single Source of Truth so that you are able to replace opinions with data and dive deep into connect performance bottlenecks to lines of codes.

Context of operational need

Modern 24*7 business model demands that internal and external users get uninterrupted and smooth user experience. Often, Customer’s brand experience and the business revenue depends directly on efficiency of technology stack and its operations.  

Typically, a business process flow across multiple applications. It traverse networks, applications, databases, compute located either in Cloud(s) or On Prem or in hybrid landscape. Often each team has their monitoring tools.  

Still, if there is a performance dip then Ops team is hard pressed to identify who is to find the cause and how do I execute an accurate and fast RCA ?  

A strong unified operations platform is needed for delivering smooth operations, consistently.

The question which often challenges the CXO and Business IT Operations is –  

  1. How do I get a single unified console with an ability to observe and traverse across network, compute, application security, application code, database, infra security, in real time ?
  2. How do I get time co-related visual dashboard across the stack ?  
  3. How do I consolidate silos of performance data into a unified Single Source of Truth ?

Possible, current orientation is aimed to collect data point(s) from a plethora of tools and really not helps to draw real-time relationship between them. A tool sprawl results in flood of metrics. No one likes a flood of data. Neither anyone likes to search for needle in a hay stack.

Recent Cisco AppDynamics e-book The Age of Application Observability states, that:

  • 78% of technologist state that the increased volume of data from multi-cloud and hybrid environments is making manual monitoring impossible.
  • 85% of technologist state that observability is now a strategic priority for their organization.

Construct of a modern FSO platform

A Modern Full Stack Observability (FSO)  Platform can “instrument” a wide range of workloads e.g. distributed apps or monolithic apps built in Java, .Net, Node.js, Python, PHP and few more. Additionally, it can instrument technologies e.g. internet, LAN, WAN network, servers, OS, DB, Applications, etc. The workload can be spread across Multi-Cloud, On Prem or Hybrid landscape.

A very granular telemetry data is collected for each business transaction as it touches various building blocks in its lifecycle  e.g. network, compute, application security, application code, database, infra security.  

The data thus collected flows into a purpose built common and shared Single Source of Truth (SSoT). Typically, SSoT spans across all 4 layers as shown below and thus can scale upto PBs of capacity. This vast amount of telemetry data gets processed by embedded ML models and algorithms. It can go deep to spot a slow SQL or a slow code which is taking time & resource beyond the acceptable threshold.

This data helps generate auto dashboard to highlight normal, slow, very slow or stalled transactions  and its related resource utilization, time it spent in different stage of processing  etc.  

The FSO platform allows you to choose granularity of observation and their thresholds. As you traverse across multiple layers and building blocks, it enables you to choose relevant “observation angle” and time window. Therefore, you can get sharply focused analytics, RCA and actionable(s).

Cisco FSO platform can do so, because it delivers comprehensive cognitive analytics across huge volumes of telemetry data being received. Cisco FSO is powered by a highly refined Cross Stack Cognition and Corelation Engine running cutting edge AI algorithms and ML models.  

Further, to retain a sharp and current design,  Cisco continuously leverages their own substantial operational insights accumulated  continuously across world and over years.  

The result is an accurate and quick cross stack RCA platform which pin points the problem segment(s) and helps drive fast resolution. You also get time synchronized and relevant data points mapped to auto generated flow map for that specific business transactions.  

Benefits which save time and effort as you resolve a situation

Moving beyond a combination of traditional point monitoring solutions, a modern FSO brings single integrated platform. It helps you reduce the tools sprawl and its resulting data overload. It brings up clean intelligence. It  delivers a comprehensive visibility, insights and RCA across full technology stack.  

As in the screenshots below, you get a single unified console. Console gives you multiple observation angles in time synchronised manner. Helps you save time and effort as you work to resolve the bottleneck.

A good FSO platform captures all the metrics, automatically 24*7 so that no event or incident is left  

out and unaccounted for. Thus, it builds a comprehensive 360 degree view of IT environment. Its designed to use cutting edge ML models and artificial intelligence algorithms to reveal complex patterns hidden in massive volumes of data. Auto generated flow maps for each business transaction,  brings in all its relationships and dependencies. It is enriched with real-time performance data.  

Cisco's Solution allows you to:

  • Focus on what matters most: Quickly prioritize and fix issues impacting revenue, user experience, business risks, and costs.
  • Business Impact Correlation: link technical performance metrics with business outcomes, allowing you to understand the impact of IT issues on business operations and revenue.
  • Proactive Issue Detection: Proactively detect anomalies and issues across domains and determine root-cause and fix/remediate quickly.
  • Minimize tool sprawl and improve TCO of your technology: Leverage a unified solution to gather data and correlate insights across multiple domains and tools to get an end-to-end view of what’s happening and why it’s happening. Improve the total cost of ownership of technology through more effective analysis and utilization.  
  • Break down silos: Bring teams together across multiple domains by providing them a single source of insight across the full stack.

Use Cases and Case Studies

Read about 3M and Carhartt journey with Cisco FSO and AppDynamics. Also, get latest insights at Cisco FSO home page and use case page. Please click on the URLs below.

AUTHOR
Hursh Chetan
POSTED ON
June 20, 2024
Download
Cloud
Network
Full Stack Observability
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