Observability Engineering (2nd Edition)
Honeycomb has released the second edition of "Observability Engineering," updating the book to reflect how AI and modern practices are redefining the field of observability. The new edition includes revised content on topics such as high-cardinality data, OpenTelemetry, and AI-driven analysis, aiming to help engineers build better systems through practical guidance.
Background
- **Honeycomb** is a company that builds observability software — tools engineers use to understand why their applications are behaving a certain way in production (e.g., why a page is slow, why errors are spiking). It was co-founded by Charity Majors, a prominent voice in the DevOps world.
- **Observability Engineering** is a book (O'Reilly, first edition 2022) that helped define the modern practice of "observability" — moving beyond traditional monitoring (dashboards and alerts) toward letting engineers ask open-ended questions about their systems using high-cardinality, event-based data.
- The **second edition** updates the conversation for the AI era: how observability practices change when systems include LLM calls, AI agents, and probabilistic outputs, and how teams can apply the same engineering rigor to those new components.
- The book is co-authored by Charity Majors, Liz Fong-Jones, and George Miranda — all Honeycomb leaders who shaped the industry's understanding of observability over the past decade.