OpenShift observability workshop

Welcome to the OpenShift observability workshop!

What you’ll learn

In this workshop, you will:

Configure and use user workload monitoring with Prometheus and Alertmanager for application health tracking
Implement logging with LokiStack for troubleshooting and performance analysis
Set up distributed tracing to understand microservices interactions and identify bottlenecks
Instrument applications using Red Hat build of OpenTelemetry for comprehensive observability
Analyze and correlate metrics, logs, and traces for effective problem resolution

Who this is for

This workshop is designed for developers who want to implement comprehensive observability for applications running on OpenShift.

Experience level: Intermediate

Prerequisites

Before starting this workshop, you should have:

Basic understanding of OpenShift and Kubernetes concepts
Familiarity with containerized applications and microservices
Experience with command line tools and YAML configuration
Basic knowledge of monitoring and logging concepts

Workshop environment

This workshop provides a fully configured OpenShift 4.21 multi-node cluster with the observability stack pre-deployed using GitOps.

You will have access to:

OpenShift Console: OpenShift Console
Your Username: %OPENSHIFT_USERNAME%

To login from the command line, use: oc login --username=%OPENSHIFT_USERNAME% --server=https://api.%openshift_cluster_ingress_domain%:6443

Use the quick-access links at the top of this page to open the OCP Console and Web Terminal in a new browser tab. They cannot be embedded directly in this workshop window.

OpenShift Console — Cluster web UI for managing your resources
Web Terminal — In-browser CLI with oc, kubectl, and other tools pre-installed. Use this for all command-line exercises unless you are using a local oc client.

All environment details and credentials are specific to your user session. The observability stack (Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, OpenTelemetry Operator) is already configured and ready for you to use.

Load generator

A k6 load generator is automatically deployed alongside the demo application when you run the setup command in Module 2. It continuously generates realistic traffic against the frontend service so that metrics, logs, and traces are populated before you start exploring them.

Traffic profile (3 virtual users, ~10–60 req/s):

Request Share Purpose

Request	Share	Purpose
`GET /ping`	30 %	Heartbeat — steady request rate in metrics
`GET /api/notes`	25 %	Read path — populates GET spans in Tempo
`POST /api/notes`	20 %	Write path — creates notes, exercises the full trace chain (frontend → backend → database → notifier)
`GET /events`	13 %	Server-sent events endpoint
`GET /not-found` etc.	7 %	Intentional 404s — generates error logs and error traces for troubleshooting exercises
`GET /`	5 %	Home page

GET /ping

30 %

Heartbeat — steady request rate in metrics

GET /api/notes

25 %

Read path — populates GET spans in Tempo

POST /api/notes

20 %

Write path — creates notes, exercises the full trace chain (frontend → backend → database → notifier)

GET /events

13 %

Server-sent events endpoint

GET /not-found etc.

7 %

Intentional 404s — generates error logs and error traces for troubleshooting exercises

GET /

5 %

Home page

You do not need to start or stop the load generator — it runs automatically in the background.

Estimated time

This workshop will take approximately 4 hours to complete.

You can work at your own pace.

Let’s get started!

Click on Workshop Overview in the navigation to begin your learning journey.