OpenObservability Talks Shopify’s Journey to Planet-Scale Observability - OpenObservability Talks S5E09
Feb 27, 2025
Elijah McPherson, an engineering leader at Shopify with expertise in observability, discusses the company's ambitious journey to create an in-house observability stack called Observe. He dives into the challenges of vendor lock-in and the strategic pivot to open-source solutions. Elijah emphasizes the critical role of developer experience and user feedback in building tools that meet engineers' needs. The conversation highlights innovative features like the Investigate API and the importance of integrating business metrics for enhanced performance insights.
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Treat Internal Platforms as Products
- Treat internal platforms like products, emphasizing product sense and user research.
- Iterate based on feedback from internal users to ensure a positive developer experience.
Observe Functionality
- Shopify built Observe on top of open-source Grafana, extending it with custom alerting, data explorers, and investigation tools.
- Observe incorporates Shopify-specific context, like team structures and background jobs, into the observability experience.
Unified Query Language
- A unified query language across different observability signals is needed.
- Shopify’s internal “Investigate API” addresses this gap, allowing queries across various data types.