Monitoring Checklist
DevOps Monitoring Checklist: What Every SaaS Team Should Track
Good monitoring isn't about tracking everything, it's about tracking the right things and avoiding alert fatigue. Here's a practical starting checklist.
Uptime
Track uptime on your critical user-facing paths, not just whether the server responds to a health check.
Latency
Track response time on key endpoints, ideally with percentiles (p95, p99) rather than just an average, which can hide real problems.
Errors
Error rate on critical paths, tracked over time, usually catches problems before customers report them.
Saturation
CPU, memory, disk, and connection pool usage, knowing you’re approaching a limit before you hit it is far better than finding out during an incident.
Dashboards vs. alerts
Not everything worth tracking is worth an alert. Reserve alerts for things that genuinely require someone to act, everything else belongs on a dashboard, not in a notification.
Common questions
Uptime, error rate, and latency on your critical paths cover most of the early-stage risk.
Alert only on things that require action, route everything else to a dashboard instead of a notification.
Rough SLOs can guide what you monitor first, then refine them once you have real data.
Related reading & services
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