Observability Signals That Predict Uptime Drops
Track the few metrics and traces that forecast downtime.
By Alex KimHead of Reliability•Published November 15, 2025•6 min read
Pick leading indicators
Queue depth, saturation, and error spike rates signal risk before outright downtime.
Trace slow spans to specific dependencies.
Dashboard for action
Build dashboards per service with SLIs, burn rate, and dependency health.
Add annotations for deploys and maintenance windows.
Predictive signals
- Queue backlog growth
- CPU and memory saturation
- Dependency error rate
Close the loop
Alert on leading signals tied to runbooks.
After incidents, promote the signals that actually predicted impact.
The fewer signals you watch, the faster you respond.
Article stats
- Author: Alex Kim
- Role: Head of Reliability
- Published: November 15, 2025
- Reading time: 6 min
Tags
#observability#uptime signals#tracing
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