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updatedAt: 2026-10-14T22:53:35.000Z
agentTools:
  projectIndex: https://docs.observeinc.com/llms.txt
---

# APM observability

Observe by Snowflake application performance monitoring (APM) helps you monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize the performance of your microservices, databases, and message brokers. By providing detailed insights into service health, dependencies, errors, and deployments, APM enables faster root cause analysis and a clearer understanding of system behavior. With powerful workflows like trace-log correlation, dependency mapping, Monitor binding, and Kubernetes integration, Observe APM empowers teams to resolve incidents quickly and improve baseline performance.

Observe by Snowflake discovers instrumented services from OpenTelemetry `service.name` resource attributes. It also infers databases, message brokers, and external dependencies from outbound spans, allowing the Service Explorer and Service Map to represent systems that do not emit their own telemetry. See [Inferred services](https://docs.observeinc.com/docs/inferred-services) for more information.

# Configure APM instrumentation

Before you can use APM features in Observe by Snowflake, you must collect application telemetry data with OpenTelemetry instrumentation and the Observe Agent.

See [APM instrumentation](https://docs.observeinc.com/docs/apm-instrumentation#/).

# Get started with Observe by Snowflake APM

Click on a card to get started with Observe by Snowflake APM.

<Cards>
  <Card title="Discover and map your services" href="https://docs.observeinc.com/docs/service-management#/">
    Learn how to use the Service Explorer and Service Inspector to gain instant visibility into all the services, databases, and message brokers powering your applications.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Search and inspect your traces" href="https://docs.observeinc.com/docs/trace-explorer#/">
    Learn how to use the Trace Explorer to quickly find and analyze traces for specific requests, services, or user interactions.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Use cases and examples" href="https://docs.observeinc.com/docs/apm-observability-use-cases-and-examples#/">
    See some use cases and examples of how to use Observe by Snowflake APM features.
  </Card>
</Cards>

# Validate or troubleshoot APM telemetry&#x20;

If you're not seeing expected data or desired features, review the [APM observability reference](https://docs.observeinc.com/docs/apm-reference) to verify you are collecting the telemetry data required to enable the desired Observe by Snowflake APM features.

# More information

Get more information about APM observability:

* Read the [launch blog](https://www.observeinc.com/blog/introducing-opentelemetry-native-application-performance-management) introducing Observe by Snowflake's OpenTelemetry-Native APM solution.
* See the [APM reference](https://docs.observeinc.com/docs/apm-reference#/) to read about APM data collection, terminology, and interface.