<strong>Logging</strong> is recording events and errors for debugging, while <strong>monitoring</strong> is tracking system health and performance in real-time. Together they help you understand and fix issues quickly.
The Security Camera Analogy
Logging is like security camera recordings—review what happened. Monitoring is like watching live feeds—see what's happening now. Alerts notify you of problems immediately.
Cameras (Logging)
Record everything
Live Monitor (Monitoring)
Watch in real-time
Alerts (Alarms)
Notify on issues
Generates Events
Record Events
Track Metrics
Log events
logger.info('User logged in'), logger.error('Payment failed')
Centralize logs
Send to ELK, Datadog, CloudWatch
Track metrics
Response time, error rate, CPU usage
Set up alerts
Notify if error rate > 1% or response time > 500ms
Debug with logs
Search logs to find root cause of issues
Wrong
"Logging is only for debugging in development"
Correct
<strong>Production logging is critical</strong>. You can't debug production issues without logs. Log errors, important events, and performance metrics. Just don't log sensitive data!
Debugging a production issue:
Alert: Error rate spiked to 5% at 3am
Check monitoring dashboard: Payment service is slow
Search logs: 'Database connection timeout' errors
Root cause: Database ran out of connections
Fix: Increase connection pool size, deploy, monitor recovery