Skills · Infrastructure & ops

Service Mesh Observability

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Implement comprehensive observability for service meshes including distributed tracing, metrics, and visualization. Use when setting up mesh monitoring, debugging latency issues, or implementing SLOs for service communication.

Originally by wshobson · MIT

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Implement comprehensive observability for service meshes including distributed tracing, metrics, and visualization. Use when setting up mesh monitoring, debugging latency issues, or implementing SLOs for service communication.

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service-mesh-observability/SKILL.md65 lines2.8 KBRawView on GitHub
Frontmatter — 2 properties
nameservice-mesh-observability
descriptionImplement comprehensive observability for service meshes including distributed tracing, metrics, and visualization. Use when setting up mesh monitoring, debugging latency issues, or implementing SLOs for service communication.
1---
2name: service-mesh-observability
3description: Implement comprehensive observability for service meshes including distributed tracing, metrics, and visualization. Use when setting up mesh monitoring, debugging latency issues, or implementing SLOs for service communication.
4---A5No allowed-tools declared — no way to tell what this skill may touch
5 
6# Service Mesh Observability
7 
8Complete guide to observability patterns for Istio, Linkerd, and service mesh deployments.
9 
10## When to Use This Skill
11 
12- Setting up distributed tracing across services
13- Implementing service mesh metrics and dashboards
14- Debugging latency and error issues
15- Defining SLOs for service communication
16- Visualizing service dependencies
17- Troubleshooting mesh connectivity
18 
19## Core Concepts
20 
21### 1. Three Pillars of Observability
22 
23```
24┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
25│ Observability │
26├─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┤
27│ Metrics │ Traces │ Logs │
28│ │ │ │
29│ • Request rate │ • Span context │ • Access logs │
30│ • Error rate │ • Latency │ • Error details │
31│ • Latency P50 │ • Dependencies │ • Debug info │
32│ • Saturation │ • Bottlenecks │ • Audit trail │
33└─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┘
34```
35 
36### 2. Golden Signals for Mesh
37 
38| Signal | Description | Alert Threshold |
39| -------------- | ------------------------- | ----------------- |
40| **Latency** | Request duration P50, P99 | P99 > 500ms |
41| **Traffic** | Requests per second | Anomaly detection |
42| **Errors** | 5xx error rate | > 1% |
43| **Saturation** | Resource utilization | > 80% |
44 
45## Templates and detailed worked examples
46 
47Full template library and detailed worked examples live in `references/details.md`. Read that file when you need the concrete templates.
48 
49## Best Practices
50 
51### Do's
52 
53- **Sample appropriately** - 100% in dev, 1-10% in prod
54- **Use trace context** - Propagate headers consistently
55- **Set up alerts** - For golden signals
56- **Correlate metrics/traces** - Use exemplars
57- **Retain strategically** - Hot/cold storage tiers
58 
59### Don'ts
60 
61- **Don't over-sample** - Storage costs add up
62- **Don't ignore cardinality** - Limit label values
63- **Don't skip dashboards** - Visualize dependencies
64- **Don't forget costs** - Monitor observability costs
65 

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