Monitoring Mechanisms

Comprehensive monitoring stack, alerting systems, and observability mechanisms

Monitoring Mechanisms

Monitoring Stack Overview

Core Architecture

Applications (OTEL SDKs) → OTEL Agent → Victoria Metrics → Grafana → Slack Alerts

Key Components

  • OpenTelemetry SDKs: Embedded in applications for telemetry collection
  • OTEL Agent: Daemon on each node collecting and forwarding metrics
  • Victoria Metrics: Time-series database for storing metrics and performance data
  • Grafana: Dashboards, visualization, and alerting platform
  • Uptime Kuma: Service availability and uptime monitoring
  • Apache Airflow: Data pipeline orchestration and workflow management

Application Monitoring

Performance Metrics

  • Response Times: API endpoint latency and processing times
  • Throughput: Request rates and transaction volumes
  • Error Rates: Application errors and failure percentages
  • Custom KPIs: Business-specific metrics and operational indicators

Error Tracking

  • Application exceptions and stack traces
  • Failed transaction monitoring
  • Service dependency failures

Infrastructure Monitoring

Cloud Resources (GCP/AWS)

  • CPU Usage: Server and container resource utilization
  • Memory Consumption: RAM usage and memory leaks detection
  • Network Performance: Bandwidth usage and connection metrics
  • Disk Usage: Storage capacity and I/O performance

Kubernetes Cluster Monitoring

  • Pod health and resource allocation
  • Node performance and availability
  • Container orchestration metrics

Database Monitoring

Cloud SQL Performance

  • Google Cloud Metrics: Native GCP monitoring for Cloud SQL instances
  • Query Performance: Slow query analysis and optimization insights
  • Connection Monitoring: Database connections and resource utilization
  • Backup Status: Database backup success and recovery metrics

Service Availability Monitoring

Uptime Kuma

  • Service Health Checks: HTTP/HTTPS endpoint monitoring
  • API Availability: Critical service endpoint status tracking
  • Response Time Monitoring: Service response time thresholds
  • Downtime Detection: Immediate alerts for service unavailability

Alerting & Notifications

Alert Configuration

  • Grafana Alerts: Threshold-based alerting on key metrics
  • Slack Integration: All alerts delivered to engineering Slack channels
  • Telegram Alerts: System alerts delivered to Telegram channel
  • Severity Levels: Critical, High, Medium, Low alert classifications
  • Alert Routing: Different alert channels based on service and severity

Monitored Thresholds

  • CPU usage > 80%
  • Memory usage > 85%
  • Disk usage > 90%
  • API response time > 5 seconds
  • Error rate > 5%
  • Service availability < 99%

Log Management

Centralized Logging

  • Application Logs: Service logs aggregated and stored
  • Access Logs: API gateway and service access patterns
  • Error Logs: Application errors and system failures
  • Audit Logs: Security events and user activity tracking

Log Retention

  • Retention Policies: Configurable based on compliance requirements
  • Log Analysis: Searchable logs for troubleshooting and investigation

Security Monitoring

Authentication & Access

  • Failed Login Attempts: Monitoring authentication failures
  • Suspicious Activity: Anomaly detection for unusual access patterns
  • API Security: Monitoring unauthorized API access attempts
  • VPN Access: Pritunl VPN connection logs and access auditing

Compliance Monitoring

  • Data access patterns and privacy compliance
  • Regulatory requirement adherence tracking
  • Security policy violation detection

Integration with Incident Management

Alert Response Flow

  1. Automated Detection: Monitoring systems detect threshold breaches
  2. Slack Notifications: Immediate alerts to engineering teams
  3. Incident Creation: Critical alerts trigger incident response procedures
  4. Escalation: Follows incident management escalation procedures

Monitoring Tools Integration

  • Grafana: Primary alerting and dashboard platform
  • Uptime Kuma: Service availability alerts
  • Slack: Central notification hub for all monitoring alerts
  • Plane: System improvement tasks based on monitoring insights
Last modified November 11, 2025: RCA added for SIP failure (16439aa)