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Challenge
Transitioning from a monolithic system to a cloud-native microservices environment, Ritchie Bros. sought to modernize their observability infrastructure to support the transition and fuel future growth.
Ritchie Bros. has been a pioneering force in the auctioneering market for nearly 70 years, charting remarkable growth through a strategic mix of organic expansion and acquisitions. The accumulation of diverse technologies from numerous acquisitions shaped a complex monolithic system, compounded by different teams using various tools for observability.
Ultimately, Ranbir Chawla, SVP of Engineering at Ritchie Bros., concluded that it was time to re-architect and migrate to a cloud-native environment based on Kubernetes. This encompassed a transition to a new automated marketplace, prompting Ranbir to recognize the crucial need to enhance their observability capabilities in order to ensure a successful digital transformation.
“We realized with at least 30 key microservices running, we needed to transition to a world where tracing became a tangible concept. Transactions were increasingly complex, demanding a deeper understanding of their flow through the system. We started our journey with OpenTelemetry and then sought out the best-suited observability solution,” explained Ranbir.
Solution
With years of prior experience with Honeycomb, Ranbir recognized it as the optimal solution to bolster Ritchie Bros. efforts in modernizing observability. As an OpenTelemetry-native observability tool, Ranbir knew that Honeycomb had the power and capabilities to provide detailed visualization and real-time, proactive debugging that would be a gamechanger for his team.
Ritchie Bros. selected Honeycomb for several standout reasons:
- Trust in the Honeycomb brand, built over years of experience with the solution
- Honeycomb’s trace-first observability approach, facilitating an end-to-end understanding of request paths
- Embrace of Honeycomb’s collaborative, service-driven approach—from purchase and onboarding to ongoing enablement and support
Results
Successful instrumentation for a trace-first observability approach
Previously, Ritchie Bros. observability primarily relied on collecting logs and essentially reconstructing traces through timestamp correlation. With Honeycomb’s trace-first observability, the team now has a comprehensive understanding of the request path for user transactions and has optimized the cost curve of observability by embedding contextual information that was previously only available in logs. Additionally, with Honeycomb, they have enhanced their traces with more detailed information beyond their previous state. The result is pinpoint insights at the team’s fingertips when they need it.
“Getting to traces was a multi-complex undertaking, and reaching that stage was a priority for us. I was truly impressed by Honeycomb’s commitment to scaling that mountain alongside us to support our project of going from a logs-centric to a trace-first approach, and the results have been remarkable. The Honeycomb team demonstrated pure servant leadership, embodying true collaboration in the best sense,” said Ranbir.
Realizing time to understanding (TTU) in seconds
Equipped with Honeycomb capabilities like BubbleUp, what used to take engineering sometimes hours to troubleshoot and debug can now be done in seconds. And with the platform’s visualizations and deep-dive trace analysis, it’s easy to get the whole team aligned on where to focus their response efforts.
As Ranbir explained, “Honeycomb has been instrumental in elevating our operational excellence, helping us achieve a fast time to understanding (TTU) in seconds or minutes. When our entire team aligns on TTU, we can seamlessly coordinate efforts towards a common outcome. And after we release code to address the issue, we again rely on Honeycomb to help us observe and validate that it’s working as expected.”
Enhanced interdepartmental coordination
Another important aspect of Ritchie Bros. observability excellence and TTU is the ability to communicate and coordinate across departments. Case in point, Ranbir shared a relatable example where the company’s website was taking a long time to load. With Honeycomb serving as the investigative backbone, providing a single source of truth, the engineering, marketing, and product management teams could swiftly identify and align on the root cause of the issue.
“Honeycomb makes the trace visuals clear and concise, so individuals who’ve never seen a trace before can understand the logic. In the case of slow web experience, we could all visualize the hops—it goes here and then here. This facilitated rapid alignment across teams, enabling quick identification of the precise source of the latency issue within minutes,” said Ranbir.
When it comes to shaping effective business strategies, Ritchie Bros. now has the observability data at their fingertips to inform decisive and well-coordinated initiatives.
“Honeycomb has really transformed how fast and how well we can coordinate across the company where we’re all working from a common point of observability insights—whether we’re troubleshooting or making capital investment decisions,” Ranbir shared, adding that “Honeycomb’s data will continue to serve as our compass, guiding us towards refining our architecture and maintaining a focused approach. As everything hinges on prioritizing choices, leveraging this observability is paramount in informing our product decisions, especially in terms of resiliency.”
At a glance
About
With roots dating back to 1958, Ritchie Bros. is a global asset management and disposition company, offering customers end-to-end solutions for buying and selling heavy equipment, trucks, and other assets. Ritchie Bros., leveraging its onsite and online selling platforms, is trusted worldwide for making buying and selling easy, efficient, fair, and transparent.
Industry
Machinery Manufacturing
Products
Honeycomb platform
Use cases
Cloud migration and system re-architecture
Platform engineering and debugging
Application performance monitoring
Results
- Enhanced system migration to the cloud with ongoing observability support
- Elevated engineering performance through modern observability practices
- Transformed troubleshooting experience, reducing TTU from hours to mere seconds
- Cultivated enhanced collaboration and decision-making across departments
- Empowered proactive problem-solving through real-time insights and analysis
“Honeycomb is an invaluable partner in our observability excellence. Their deep-rooted understanding of the observability space aligns perfectly with our ethos. In navigating the complexities of seeing and understanding our modern architecture, Honeycomb’s unparalleled capabilities stand out. As our go-to tool, it quickly provides the visual and technical insights we need, making it indispensable in our pursuit of understanding and mission success.”
Ranbir Chawla, SVP of Engineering at Ritchie Bros.
