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CL-401 Cloud & Platform

Observability Engineering (OpenTelemetry · Grafana · PromQL/KQL)

Build observability people actually use at 3 a.m.: OpenTelemetry instrumentation across metrics, logs and traces, Grafana dashboards designed around questions not vanity, PromQL and KQL query fluency, and alert design bound to runbooks — every alert shipped must name its response.

B4Professional
5modules
35skill atoms
3role journeys
Curriculum

What this course covers.

5 modules, 35 named skill atoms. Expand any module to see them.

1Three Signals Unified7 skill atoms
metrics/logs/tracesOTel pipelinesCollector receivers, processors & exporterssemantic conventions & resource attributeshead vs tail samplingexemplars linking metrics to tracesretention cost per signal
2Instrumentation Lab7 skill atoms
auto+manual spanscontext propagationW3C traceparent across service hopsspan attributes & eventserror status and exception recordingtracing across queue boundarieshigh-cardinality attribute discipline
3Query Fluency7 skill atoms
PromQL drillsKQL drillscardinality carerate() vs increase() on countershistogram_quantile for p95/p99label joins with group_leftKQL summarize & bin over time
4Dashboards as Questions7 skill atoms
design methoddrill-down pathsRED & USE dashboard layoutstemplate variables per service and envis-it-us-or-them panelweek-over-week comparisondashboard ownership and pruning
5Alerts with Runbooks7 skill atoms
SLO alerts4 runbook'd scenariospaging hygienemulti-window burn-rate alertsfor-duration to suppress flapssymptom alerts over cause alertsrouting, severity & noise budget
Where it fits

CL-401 in the role journeys.

This course appears in 3 of our 45 role journeys. Here is what a learner takes immediately before and after it in each.

Site Reliability Engineer

Practitioner stage
CL-101CL-401CL-403

Cloud Network Engineer

Professional stage
CL-303CL-401CL-501

Multi-Cloud Engineer

Professional stage
CL-306CL-401CL-314

Roles this course serves

The capability ladder

This course is authored to band B4.

Every course we run is written to one rung of the CASI ladder, so a plan can be assembled to take a team from where they are to where they need to be.

What do B1–B6 mean?The CASI Capability Ladder — click to expand

Every course targets a band on the CASI Capability Ladder — our six-band proficiency scale, anchored to open standards (O*NET, ESCO, NICE, NIST AI RMF, Bloom's). A band tells you how deep a course goes, and what evidence proves it.

What the learner can doTypical evidence
B1
AwareUnderstands concepts and vocabulary; uses tools with guidance
Knowledge checks
B2
FoundationPerforms standard tasks correctly in familiar contexts
Guided labs, autograded exercises
B3
PractitionerDelivers complete pieces of work independently
Scenario labs, proctored hands-on exams
B4
ProfessionalHandles production-grade complexity, trade-offs and failure modes
Break-fix drills, design defenses
B5
AdvancedEngineers systems end-to-end under constraints; leads others
Rubric-scored capstones, vivas
B6
ExpertSets direction; recognised authority across teams
Portfolio + panel evaluation

A note on B6. Courses in this catalog target B1–B5. B6 is not taught — it is recognised, through a portfolio and a panel, once someone is setting direction for others. Every journey here is built to land a learner at B5.

Next step

Run CL-401 for your team.

This course runs at several lengths depending on how deep you need to go and how much of it your people already have. Tell us who is being trained and we will scope it.

Add it to a training plan Talk to our team Check your team’s level free