Why Your Application Needs Observability: Building a Self-Hosted Observability Pipeline with the LGTM Stack (Loki, Grafana, Tempo, Mimir)

Short summary

A beginner-friendly guide to building a self-hosted observability pipeline using the LGTM stack (Loki, Grafana, Tempo, Mimir) with OpenTelemetry instrumentation. It explains the difference between monitoring and observability, covers metrics, logs, and traces, and walks through how each tool fits into the architecture. Not AI-related but solid DevOps content.

• •Explains observability fundamentals: metrics, logs, and traces and why you need all three
• •Covers the LGTM stack architecture with OpenTelemetry as the instrumentation standard
• •Provides a practical narrative showing how observability turns 'I don't know' into 'here's what happened and why'

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