SIG Observability Charter

observability-charter.md

@@ -0,0 +1,206 @@
+# CNCF SIG Observability Charter
+
+- [CNCF SIG Observability Charter](#cncf-sig-observability-charter)
+ - [Introduction](#introduction)
+ - [Mission](#mission)
+ - [Areas considered in Scope](#areas-considered-in-scope)
+ - [Areas considered out of Scope](#areas-considered-out-of-scope)
+ - [Roadmap & Initial Efforts](#roadmap--initial-efforts)
+ - [Governance](#governance)
+ - [Operations](#operations)
+
+*Initially authored by [Matthew Young][matthew young] with grateful review and
+contributions from:
+[Alex Nauda][Alex Nauda],
+[Alois Reitbauer][Alois Reitbauer],
+[Bartłomiej (Bartek) Płotka][Bartłomiej (Bartek) Płotka],
+[Daniel Khan][Daniel Khan],
+[Daniel Prata][Daniel Prata],
+[Lincoln Sward][Lincoln Sward],
+[Matthias Loibl][Matthias Loibl],
+[Michael Hausenblas][Michael Hausenblas],
+[Ricardo Aravena][Ricardo Aravena],
+[Richard Hartmann][Richard Hartmann],
+[Sergey Kanzhelev][Sergey Kanzhelev],
+[Steve Flanders][Steve Flanders],
+[Ted Young][Ted Young],
+[Tigran Najaryan][Tigran Najaryan],
+[Tommy Chong][Tommy Chong],
+and [Umair Ishaq][Umair Ishaq].*
+
+<!-- TODO: please put github names here -->
+[Matthew Young]: https://github.com/halcyondude
+[Alex Nauda]: @
+[Alois Reitbauer]: https://github.com/aloisreitbauer
+[Bartłomiej (Bartek) Płotka]: https://github.com/bwplotka
+[Daniel Khan]: @
+[Daniel Prata]: @
+[Lincoln Sward]: @
+[Matthias Loibl]: https://github.com/metalmatze
+[Michael Hausenblas]: https://github.com/mhausenblas
+[Ricardo Aravena]: https://github.com/raravena80
+[Richard Hartmann]: https://github.com/RichiH
+[Sergey Kanzhelev]: @
+[Steve Flanders]: https://github.com/flands
+[Ted Young]: @
+[Tigran Najaryan]: @
+[Tommy Chong]: https://github.com/techietommy
+[Umair Ishaq]: https://github.com/umairishaq
+
+## Introduction
+
+This document describes the purpose and operations of the Cloud Native
+Computing Foundation ([CNCF]) Special Interest Group ([SIG]) on Observability.
+
+This [SIG] focuses on topics pertaining to the observation
+of [cloud native][cn-def] workloads. Additionally, it produces supporting
+material and best practices for end-users and provides guidance and
+coordination for CNCF projects working within the SIG’s scope.
+
+A full list of [CNCF projects][projs] can be found at [landscape.cncf.io].
+
+[cncf]: https://www.cncf.io
+[projs]: https://www.cncf.io/projects
+[landscape.cncf.io]: https://landscape.cncf.io
+[sig]: https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/master/sigs/cncf-sigs.md
+[cn-def]: https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/master/DEFINITION.md
+
+## Mission
+
+Consistent with the CNCF [SIG] definition, the mission of SIG Observability
+is to:
+
+- Foster and grow the ecosystem of observability related projects, users, and
+ maintainers.
+- Identify and report gaps in the CNCF's project portfolio on topics of
+ observability to the TOC and the wider CNCF community.
+- Collect, curate, champion, and disseminate patterns and current best practices
+ related to the observation of cloud-native systems that are effective and
+ actionable.
+- Educate and inform users with unbiased, accurate, and pertinent information.
+- Educate and help other CNCF projects in regarding observability techniques and
+ practices available within the CNCF.
+- Provide and maintain a vendor-neutral venue for relevant thought validation,
+ discussion, and project feedback.
+- Provide a ladder for community members to become involved with the technical
+ oversight of projects within the SIG's scope in an open, transparent, and
+ inclusive way.
+
+## Areas considered in Scope
+
+Observability focuses on patterns, projects, tools, and techniques related to
+topics such as:
+
+- Methodologies for instrumenting, collecting, processing, storing, querying,
+ curating, and correlating observational data such as metrics, logging/events,
+ trace spans, and profiling of cloud native workloads.
+- Using distributed trace tooling to observe a series of calls between
+ microservices to understand where time is being spent.
+- Managing the complexity, operational cost, and resource consumption of
+ observability tools and systems at the enterprise scale.
+- Best practices for meaningful alerting, queries, and operational dashboards
+ including how to manage things including rules, definitions, thresholds and
+ policies.
+- How developers, operators, Site Reliability Engineers (SRE), IT Engineers, and
+ other actors comprehend, process, and reason on distributed cloud-native
+ systems.
+- Projects that incorporate novel & insightful approaches to utilizing
+ observability data such as:
+ - ML, model training, Bayesian networks, and other data science techniques
+ that enable anomaly & intrusion detection.
+ - Correlating resource consumption with costing data to reduce the total cost
+ of cloud native infrastructure
+ - Using observability data exposed by service meshes, orchestrators, and other
+ metric sources to inform continuous deployment tooling (e.g. Canary
+ Predicates/Judges).
+- Objective curation and generation of case studies pertaining to delivering
+ observability tools/systems to end users.
+- Best practices around observability and its continuous improvement, e.g. post
+ mortems, runbooks
+- Provide guidance around and foster interoperability between observability
+ solutions without trying to enforce one specific standard.
+- Foster understanding of the prerequisites and corner-stones of observability
+ like SLI/KPI, service objectives, and internal/external commitments.
+
+The following is a non-exhaustive sample list of activities and deliverables
+that are **in-scope** for this SIG
+
+- Summary and overview of projects available in the community.
+- Catalog of reference architectures that draw from CNCF projects, combining
+ them in useful and novel ways.
+- Definitions of implementations and patterns for best practices for
+ delivering observability tooling at enterprise scale.
+- Tooling composition and toolchain creation based on existing projects.
+- Best practices for operations and monitoring workflows using CNCF Projects.
+- Organizing and helping to provide visibility to Meetups, Blogs, and Podcasts
+ related to the scope of the SIG.
+- Guidance for application development and architecture that is observable.
+- Replicatable reference architectures.
+- Patterns for observing application delivery pipelines.
+- Education regarding instrumentation cloud native workloads.
+- Processing and Accessing relevant observability data at scale.
+- Policy and security controls for observability data.
+- Creating artifacts as part of CI/CD pipelines that facilitate observation of
+ services. Concrete examples might be:
+ - Service profiles for Linkerd.
+ - Debug binaries or other diagnostic metadata.
+ - representative trace spans from failing CI tests.
+
+## Areas considered out of Scope
+
+Anything not explicitly considered in the scope above.
+
+Examples include:
+
+- Datastores that are not primarily used for observability. Those datastores
+ might be in the scope of SIG Storage.
+- Security aspects that need to be present when setting up cloud native
+ infrastructure, these might be more relevant for SIG Security.
+- How cloud native applications that need observability are deployed; this would
+ fall in the scope of SIG App Delivery.`
+- Tools and projects that are used to run cloud native workloads that in some
+ cases need observability would fall under the scope of SIG-Runtime.
+
+## Roadmap & Initial Efforts
+
+- Contribute to [due diligence reports][ddr] to assist the CNCF TOC for projects
+ in the scope of the SIG.
+- Facilitate webinars and presentations from CNCF projects and domain experts in
+ the scope of the SIG.
+- Formation of [SIG working group(s)][sigwg] as resource capacity and member
+ contribution allows.
+
+ > _SIGs may choose to spawn focussed and time-limited working groups to achieve some of their responsibilities (for example, to produce a specific educational white paper, or portfolio gap analysis report). Working groups should have a clearly documented charter, timeline (typically a few quarters at most), and set of deliverables. Once the timeline has elapsed, or the deliverables delivered, the working group dissolves, or is explicitly re-chartered._
+
+[ddr]: https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/master/process/due-diligence-guidelines.md
+[sigwg]: https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/master/sigs/cncf-sigs.md#responsibilities--empowerment-of-sigs
+
+## Governance
+
+- This SIG follows the [standard operating model][som] provided by the TOC
+ unless otherwise stated here.
+
+[som]: https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/master/sigs/cncf-sigs.md#operating-model
+
+## Operations
+
+- The formation of the SIG follows the [documented process][sigform].
+
+_Note: all of the roles below are initial proposals and must be accepted by the TOC per formation process_
+
+- Proposed [Roles][sigroles] for SIG Observability
+ - TOC Liaison: [Brendan Burns](https://github.com/brendandburns) ([email protected])
+ - SIG Chairs: pending TOC guidance
+ - _Nominated by the charter working group or self:_ Matt Young, Richard Hartmann, Steve Flanders, *Ricardo Aravena*\*
+ - Tech Leads: pending TOC guidance
+ - _Nominated by the charter working group or self:_ Bartłomiej Płotka, *Richard Hartmann*\*, Michael Hausenblas, Alois Reitbauer
+
+[sigform]: https://github.com/cncf/toc/tree/master/sigs#sig-formation-process
+[sigroles]: https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/master/sigs/cncf-sigs.md#sig-member-roles
+
+- Contact
+ - Slack channel: #sig-observability @ [https://cloud-native.slack.com](https://cloud-native.slack.com)
+ - Email List: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])
+- Meeting Schedule:
+ - TBD - pending feedback from SIG members
+ - [https://www.cncf.io/community/calendar](https://www.cncf.io/community/calendar/)