Workshop 12: Observability and Metrics

Learning Objectives

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

1. Locate metrics - Find and interpret metric definitions
2. Trace observability setup - Identify where metrics and tracing are initialized
3. Connect signals to subsystems - Map metrics to runtime behavior

Goal

Build a mental model of how ICN observes itself and how operators diagnose issues using metrics, tracing, and logs.

Prerequisites

• Completed Module 12: Observability
• Familiarity with Module 9 (Operations)

Estimated time

1-2 hours

Related Materials

• icn/crates/icn-obs/
• monitoring/README.md
• docs/onboarding/patterns.md

Part 1: Metric Definitions

Steps

1. Open icn/crates/icn-obs/src/metrics/
2. Choose one subsystem file (e.g., gossip or ledger)
3. List three metrics and their descriptions

Questions

1. What naming convention is used?
2. Which metrics indicate throughput vs errors?

Checkpoint

• You can find and interpret metric definitions

Part 2: Initialization Path

Steps

1. Find where observability is initialized in runtime startup
2. Identify which components register metrics

Questions

1. Where are metric descriptions registered?
2. Where is tracing configured?

Checkpoint

• You can trace the observability initialization path

Part 3: Dashboard Mapping

Steps

1. Open monitoring/grafana-dashboard.json
2. Identify panels related to gossip and ledger
3. Note which metrics drive those panels

Checkpoint

• You can map dashboard panels to subsystem metrics

Summary

After completing this workshop you should be able to:

• Locate metric definitions and interpret their intent
• Trace how observability is initialized
• Connect dashboards to runtime behavior

Next steps

Proceed to Workshop 13: Security and Privacy