Complexity Levels
| Level |
Tools |
Setup Time |
Best For |
| Minimal |
UptimeRobot, Healthchecks.io |
15 min |
Side projects, MVPs |
| Standard |
Uptime Kuma, Sentry, basic Grafana |
1-2 hours |
Small teams, startups |
| Professional |
Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Alertmanager |
1-2 days |
Production systems |
| Enterprise |
Datadog, New Relic, or full OSS stack |
Ongoing |
Large-scale operations |
The Three Pillars
| Pillar |
What It Answers |
Tools |
| Metrics |
"How is the system performing?" |
Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog |
| Logs |
"What happened?" |
Loki, ELK, CloudWatch |
| Traces |
"Why is this request slow?" |
Jaeger, Tempo, Sentry |
Quick Start by Use Case
"I just want to know if it's down"
→ UptimeRobot (free) or Uptime Kuma (self-hosted). See simple.md.
"I need to debug production errors"
→ Sentry with your framework SDK. 5-minute setup. See apm.md.
"I want real observability"
→ Prometheus + Grafana + Loki. See prometheus.md.
"I need to centralize logs"
→ Loki for simple, ELK for complex queries. See logs.md.
What to Monitor
Applications (RED Method)
- Rate — requests per second
- Errors — error rate by endpoint
- Duration — latency (p50, p95, p99)
Infrastructure (USE Method)
- Utilization — CPU, memory, disk usage
- Saturation — queue depth, load average
- Errors — hardware/system errors
Alerting Principles
| Do |
Don't |
| Alert on symptoms (user impact) |
Alert on causes (CPU high) |
| Include runbook link |
Require investigation to understand |
| Set appropriate severity |
Make everything P1 |
| Require action |
Alert on "interesting" metrics |
Alert fatigue kills monitoring. If alerts are ignored, you have no monitoring.
For alert configuration, severities, and on-call setup, see alerting.md.
Cost Comparison
| Solution |
Monthly Cost (small) |
Monthly Cost (medium) |
| UptimeRobot |
Free |
$7 |
| Uptime Kuma |
$5 (VPS) |
$5 (VPS) |
| Sentry |
Free / $26 |
$80 |
| Grafana Cloud |
Free tier |
$50+ |
| Datadog |
$15/host |
$23/host + features |
| Self-hosted stack |
$10-20 (VPS) |
$50-100 (VPS) |
Common Mistakes
- Starting with Prometheus/Grafana when Uptime Kuma would suffice
- No alerting (dashboards nobody watches)
- Too many alerts (alert fatigue → ignored)
- Missing runbooks (alert fires, nobody knows what to do)
- Not monitoring from outside (only internal checks)
- Storing logs forever (cost explodes)
1---2name: monitoring3description: Set up observability for applications and infrastructure with metrics, logs, traces, and alerts.4---56## Complexity Levels78| Level | Tools | Setup Time | Best For |9|-------|-------|------------|----------|10| **Minimal** | UptimeRobot, Healthchecks.io | 15 min | Side projects, MVPs |11| **Standard** | Uptime Kuma, Sentry, basic Grafana | 1-2 hours | Small teams, startups |12| **Professional** | Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Alertmanager | 1-2 days | Production systems |13| **Enterprise** | Datadog, New Relic, or full OSS stack | Ongoing | Large-scale operations |1415## The Three Pillars1617| Pillar | What It Answers | Tools |18|--------|-----------------|-------|19| **Metrics** | "How is the system performing?" | Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog |20| **Logs** | "What happened?" | Loki, ELK, CloudWatch |21| **Traces** | "Why is this request slow?" | Jaeger, Tempo, Sentry |2223## Quick Start by Use Case2425**"I just want to know if it's down"**26→ UptimeRobot (free) or Uptime Kuma (self-hosted). See `simple.md`.2728**"I need to debug production errors"**29→ Sentry with your framework SDK. 5-minute setup. See `apm.md`.3031**"I want real observability"**32→ Prometheus + Grafana + Loki. See `prometheus.md`.3334**"I need to centralize logs"**35→ Loki for simple, ELK for complex queries. See `logs.md`.3637## What to Monitor3839### Applications (RED Method)40- **R**ate — requests per second41- **E**rrors — error rate by endpoint42- **D**uration — latency (p50, p95, p99)4344### Infrastructure (USE Method)45- **U**tilization — CPU, memory, disk usage46- **S**aturation — queue depth, load average47- **E**rrors — hardware/system errors4849## Alerting Principles5051| Do | Don't |52|----|-------|53| Alert on symptoms (user impact) | Alert on causes (CPU high) |54| Include runbook link | Require investigation to understand |55| Set appropriate severity | Make everything P1 |56| Require action | Alert on "interesting" metrics |5758**Alert fatigue kills monitoring.** If alerts are ignored, you have no monitoring.5960For alert configuration, severities, and on-call setup, see `alerting.md`.6162## Cost Comparison6364| Solution | Monthly Cost (small) | Monthly Cost (medium) |65|----------|---------------------|----------------------|66| UptimeRobot | Free | $7 |67| Uptime Kuma | $5 (VPS) | $5 (VPS) |68| Sentry | Free / $26 | $80 |69| Grafana Cloud | Free tier | $50+ |70| Datadog | $15/host | $23/host + features |71| Self-hosted stack | $10-20 (VPS) | $50-100 (VPS) |7273## Common Mistakes7475- Starting with Prometheus/Grafana when Uptime Kuma would suffice76- No alerting (dashboards nobody watches)77- Too many alerts (alert fatigue → ignored)78- Missing runbooks (alert fires, nobody knows what to do)79- Not monitoring from outside (only internal checks)80- Storing logs forever (cost explodes)
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