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# [[Monitoring]]
Monitoring is the process of continuously tracking the behaviour of a system using quantifiable information ([[Telemetry]]). Monitoring is one type of activity that improves the overall [[Observability]] of a system.
## [[Reasons for monitoring]]
## Types of monitoring
### Backend monitoring
Backend monitoring consists of gathering information about the underlying infrastructure of a system. Often, backend information is called [[Telemetry]], and consists of the following signals:
- [[Metrics]]
- [[Logs]]
- [[Traces]]
- [[Continuous Profiling]] (of [[CPU Utilization]] and [[Memory Utilization]])
### Frontend monitoring
Frontend monitoring involves gathering information about application interfaces, including how users interact with them and how elements are rendered on end user devices.
- [[Real User Monitoring]]
- [[Synthetic monitoring]]
## Approaches to monitoring
There are two main concerns in monitoring:
- how to get the data you want from a component
- how to aggregate that data from all components and send them to a central repository
Your approach to monitoring will be determined by some combination of the options for handling these concerns.
### How to get information to monitor
- [[Instrumentation]] involves getting the component to expose the information you want.
- [[Manual monitoring]]
- Manual monitoring is more ad hoc. Instead of information being automatically collected and saved, manual monitoring involves explicitly querying information when it's needed.
### [[Aggregating monitoring data]]
Once you have the information you want, you'll need to figure out how to get it from the component you're monitoring to wherever you're storing/analysing the information. This can involve either [[Push-based monitoring]] or [[Pull-based monitoring]].
### [[Observability Tools]]
## See also
- [[Schrödinger's Pokémon - Observability for chaotic load testing]]