Observability is increasingly important in our modern apps/cloud-native world. However, when adding observability to existing production apps, there are a number of tradeoffs in approaches and in tools. Often, these tradeoffs are an exercise in confusion, leading to decision paralysis. We took on the challenge of adding observability to NGINX MARA, investigating choices, discovering and addressing challenges while keeping to open source solutions whenever possible. You’ll come away with an understanding of how the three classes of data (metrics, traces, logs) work together, why we chose the solutions we used, and how we extended past the normal space into health checks, introspection, and core dumps. Come learn from our experience in dealing with OpenTelemetry and related tools, from traces, metrics, and logs, in working with production class apps and discover what approach finally worked for us.