Kubernetes Observability: Metrics, Logs, and Traces
Kubernetes observability is built on three pillars — metrics, logs, and distributed traces — but the platform introduces a fourth dimension: the health of Kubernetes objects themselves (desired vs. actual state). Two separate metrics pipelines coexist: the resource metrics pipeline (kubelet cAdvisor → metrics-server → kubectl top and HPA) and the monitoring metrics pipeline (Prometheus scraping kubelet, kube-state-metrics, and node-exporter). Logs flow from container stdout/stderr through the container runtime to DaemonSet shippers (Fluent Bit, Fluentd, Vector) and on to Loki or Elasticsearch. Distributed tracing with OpenTelemetry and the OTel Collector provides cross-service request flow visibility. Exemplars stitch these three pillars together, embedding trace IDs directly in Prometheus metrics so a p99 latency spike links to the exact distributed trace that caused it.
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