Observability 2.0 and the Database for It

Observability 2.0 is a concept introduced by Charity Majors of Honeycomb, though she later expressed reservations about labeling it as such(follow-up). Despite its contested naming, Observability 2.0 represents an evolution from the foundational "three pillars" of observability, metrics, logs, and traces, which have dominated the field for nearly a decade. Instead, it emphasizes a single source of truth paradigm as a data foundation of observability. This approach prioritizes high-cardinality, wide-event datasets over traditional siloed telemetry, aiming to address modern system complexity more effectively. What is Observability 2.0 and Wide Events ​ For years, observability has relied on the three pillars of metrics, logs, and traces. These pillars spawned countless libraries, tools, and standards—including OpenTelemetry, one of the most successful cloud-native projects, which is built entirely on this paradigm. However, as systems grow in complexity, the limitations of this approa ... Read full article.