Question
In the context of computers, what is telemetry?
Answer
Telemetry in I.T. is the logged system data transmitted from other servers.
A more detailed definition of telemetry is the utilization of a centralized system to automatically ingest log data from other sources to enable one or more of the following: redundant storage of critical log data, monitoring, data visualization, anomaly detection, resource utilization for billing, performance diagnostics including root cause analysis of failures. This definition is based on our interpretation of The DevOps Handbook and the book OpenStack Operations Guide by Fifield et al.
The log data could be application metadata, operating system logs or container logs. The system or sources could be a server, a cluster of servers, a container or a group of containers. To meter the use of servers or measure quantifiable aggregates of data, telemetry provides logging and monitoring functionality.
Telemetry has its place for activities such as managing operating system packages, vulnerability auditing, and the cataloging of software versions.