Observability does not need a platform team. Structured logs, a handful of metrics and traces on the main paths answer most "why is it broken?" questions. What each signal is for, OpenTelemetry as the default, CloudWatch prices that surprise people ($0.50 per GB of standard logs ingested), and an alert list short enough to respect.
Structured (JSON) logs with a request ID on every line, passed through to every service the request touches.
The four golden signals per service: traffic, errors, latency and saturation.
One or two business metrics: sign-ups, orders, messages sent. They catch failures infrastructure metrics miss.
Traces for the main user journeys, instrumented with OpenTelemetry so you can change vendors without changing code.
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In US East, standard log ingestion is $0.50 per GB and the Infrequent Access class $0.25 per GB, storage is $0.03 per GB-month, custom metrics are $0.30 per metric-month for the first 10,000, and alarms are $0.10 each a month, with a free tier of 5 GB of logs and 10 custom metrics. Logs are almost always the large line: debug logging left on in production, or full request bodies, can cost more than the servers.
Log at info level in production; sample debug logs if you need them.
Never log full request bodies, tokens or personal data. It is a cost and a breach waiting to happen.
Set retention on every log group. The default keeps logs forever.
Use high-cardinality values (user IDs, request IDs) in logs and traces, not as metric dimensions, where each combination is a new billed metric.
Error rate on key routes above a threshold for five minutes.
p95 latency on key routes well above normal.
Oldest message age on important queues, and any message in a dead-letter queue.
The business metric dropping sharply against the same hour last week.
External uptime check failing.
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Book a free 30-minute call about it. Bring your setup and your bill; you'll leave knowing what we'd do first and roughly what it costs, whether or not you hire us.
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As of October 26, 2026. Provided as is, for general information, and accurate to the best of our knowledge on the date shown. Not legal, compliance, tax, financial or other professional advice. Prices, limits and vendor services change; check current vendor documentation before relying on anything here. Terms of use.