Dependency Telemetry Implementation Plan

1. Objectives

The goal of this Dependency Telemetry Implementation Plan is to monitor and enhance the health, performance, and reliability of external services and components that our workload depends on. By capturing telemetry data, we aim to identify bottlenecks, performance issues, and failures early to maintain optimal workload performance and minimize disruptions.

2. Scope

• Monitor the reachability, health, latency, and failure rates of external services.
• Capture metrics, logs, and traces for dependencies such as databases, DNS, and third-party APIs.
• Proactively detect issues, enabling timely corrective actions.

3. Dependencies to Monitor

• Databases: Availability, latency, and error rates.
• DNS Services: Response time, reachability, and reliability.
• Third-Party APIs: Latency, request success rate, and response quality.

4. Metrics to Capture

• Reachability: Track if dependencies are available and accessible.
• Latency: Measure the time taken for requests to complete.
• Timeouts: Identify dependencies experiencing repeated timeouts.
• Error Rates: Capture HTTP response codes to identify failure patterns.

5. Logging and Tracing

• Logs:
  • Capture logs for all external dependency requests, including request status, latency, and errors.
  • Use Amazon CloudWatch Logs to centralize log management.
• Tracing:
  • Use AWS X-Ray to implement distributed tracing for external dependencies.
  • Identify specific parts of the dependency chain causing delays or failures.

6. Monitoring Tools

• Amazon CloudWatch:
  • Monitor availability, latency, and error metrics for all dependencies.
  • Set thresholds for key metrics to trigger alerts.
• Amazon Managed Grafana:
  • Visualize metrics for real-time performance monitoring.
• AWS CloudTrail:
  • Track API activity to correlate telemetry with specific actions.

7. Alerting Strategy

• Threshold Alerts:
  • Set up Amazon CloudWatch alarms for metrics like latency, availability, and error rates.
  • Define alert thresholds to trigger notifications through Amazon SNS.
• Notification Channels:
  • Use Amazon SNS to send notifications to the operations team via email or SMS when thresholds are breached.

8. Incident Management

• Proactive Detection:
  • Monitor metrics and set up automatic alerts to detect failures before they impact users.
  • Log incidents related to dependency failures in the Incident Response Log.
• Corrective Actions:
  • Implement fallback mechanisms such as retries, backup services, or switching to healthy components.
  • Maintain an Incident Response Log detailing actions taken and outcomes.

9. Roles and Responsibilities

• Dependency Analyst:
  • Monitor metrics and logs for dependencies, identify potential bottlenecks.
  • Propose mitigation strategies for identified issues.
• Application Developer:
  • Instrument the application to emit telemetry for dependency interactions (latency, timeouts, errors).
  • Use tracing to gain insights into dependency performance.
• Operations Engineer:
  • Set up monitoring and alerting.
  • Take corrective action during incidents to minimize impact.

10. Artifacts

• Dependency Telemetry Implementation Plan: This document, outlining dependencies, metrics, and telemetry approach.
• Dependency Health Dashboard: Visualization of health, reachability, latency, and other metrics.
• Incident Response Log: Record of incidents, corrective actions taken, and outcomes.

11. Optimization and Continuous Improvement

• Data Analysis:
  • Regularly analyze telemetry data to identify optimization opportunities.
  • Improve cache strategies, adjust configurations, or modify logic to enhance performance.
• Review Cycle:
  • Hold quarterly reviews to assess telemetry data and update monitoring strategies.
  • Continuously evolve thresholds and alerts based on system performance trends.

12. Implementation Timeline

• Week 1: Identify key dependencies and define metrics.
• Week 2-3: Implement logging, tracing, and monitoring tools.
• Week 4: Set up dashboards and alerting mechanisms.
• Week 5: Conduct testing to ensure telemetry is correctly captured.
• Week 6: Finalize incident management processes and train team members.

13. Success Metrics

Response Time: Improved response time to detected issues through alerts.

Reduced Latency: Measure reduction in latency for critical dependencies.

Incident Reduction: Fewer incidents related to dependency failures.