📘 What is SigNoz?

SigNoz Overview

SigNoz is a free, open-source observability platform — think of it as your application's health dashboard. It tells you:

What is happening inside your running app (Traces)
How well your app is performing — CPU, memory, response time (Metrics)
What your app is saying — error messages, warnings, info logs (Logs)

All three in one single dashboard, without needing to juggle 3 different tools.

🧠 Why Do You Need It?

Imagine your app crashes at 2 AM. Without SigNoz, you have no idea:

Which API call failed?
How long did each step take?
Was it the database or your code?

With SigNoz, you open the dashboard and see exactly where things went wrong — down to the millisecond.

✅ What SigNoz Can Track

Feature	What It Means
Distributed Tracing	Follow a user request step-by-step through your system
Metrics Monitoring	Track CPU, memory, request count, error rate
Log Aggregation	Collect and search logs from all your apps in one place
Alerting	Get notified when something breaks (future setup)
OpenTelemetry Native	Works with the universal observability standard
Self-Hosted	Your data stays on your own server — no third party

🏗️ How It Works (Simple View)

Your App
   ↓  (sends data via OpenTelemetry)
OTEL Collector
   ↓  (forwards data)
SigNoz Backend (ClickHouse database)
   ↓
SigNoz Dashboard (your browser)

📦 What Gets Installed

When you run SigNoz via Docker, it starts these containers automatically:

Container	Role
`signoz`	The main web UI + API
`clickhouse`	The database that stores all your telemetry
`zookeeper`	Manages ClickHouse coordination
`otel-collector`	Receives data from your apps

🔌 Ports Used by SigNoz

Understanding ports is critical — especially if you already have other services running.

Port	Purpose	Who Uses It
`3301`	Web UI (browser dashboard)	You open this in browser
`4317`	OTLP gRPC — apps send traces/metrics here	Your Node.js / Python apps
`4318`	OTLP HTTP — alternative for apps	Your apps (HTTP version)

⚠️ Important: The default SigNoz port is 8080 for the UI, but if another service (like Jenkins) already uses 8080, you must change it. In this setup we use 3301.

🌐 Self-Hosted vs Cloud

SigNoz offers two options:

	Self-Hosted (This Guide)	SigNoz Cloud
Cost	Free	Paid
Your data	Stays on your server	Stored by SigNoz
Setup	You manage it	They manage it
Best for	Privacy, cost savings	No-ops teams

This documentation covers self-hosted setup on a Linux VM (GCP or any cloud/local server).

Official Documentation Links

Read in Sequence

Start: README.md
Next: 2-comparison.md

🧠 Why Do You Need It?​

✅ What SigNoz Can Track​

🏗️ How It Works (Simple View)​

📦 What Gets Installed​

🔌 Ports Used by SigNoz​

🌐 Self-Hosted vs Cloud​

Official Documentation Links​

Read in Sequence​