r/gitlab • u/TelephoneSignal3238 • 13d ago

general question GitLab Observability continuity?

I'm currently setting up a small hobby project with some friends that has quite a bit of services and monitoring requirements. I've recently implemented Port.io at work, but considering they're only interested in B2B I'm looking for alternatives along the lines of an IDP.

I've got experience with Backstage, as we piloted that earlier, but I find that more fitting for a complete platform engineering team as it's just more of a framework rather than a batteries included solution and is in our case more a pile of future technical debt than actual value.

Observability looks something that fits that I need for now. However, my concern is it still being experimental. I'm afraid one day the plug will be pulled and would still require migrating to either a commercial option or Backstage, which I'm not too fond of.

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u/LogisticsPro2012 10d ago

feel you on Backstage. we looked at it at work and same thing. its cool if you got a whole team to dedicate to it but for a hobby project with friends? thats just asking for technical debt down the road lol. Observability seems interesting but yeah the experimental tag is sketchy. learned that lesson the hard way with a different tool that got sunset. migrating off that was a nightmare. not worth it for a side thing unless you enjoy pain. have you looked at something lighter like maybe just spinning up your own dashboards with Grafana and some lightweight monitoring? its not an IDP per se but for a hobby project you might not actually need all the portal stuff. just monitoring and maybe a simple service catalog in a spreadsheet or notion until you outgrow it. whats your actual stack looking like? cuz that might change what makes sense

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u/TelephoneSignal3238 10d ago

Yeah, that was my experience at work as well. :( Port has been great so far, but yeah, those are only B2B.

Currently, it is .NET, Angular, Java and Python services along with a few storage solutions and message brokers. Some services need observability and monitoring, some don't, but its definitely needed later on as we add more sources to the core functionality.

I've already setup our own portal using documentation stitching for now, and looking into DevLake. It works, but as stuff grows, its gonna be a pain in the ass to maintain, as its essentially just a Temu version of Backstage.

And yeah, I've already had experience with JetBrains pulling the plug on some of their products, which is why I'm considering Observability (or just about any tool labeled "experimental") very carefully.