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Overview

When something breaks in production such as a slow API, a failed deployment, a spike in errors, your users don’t care which system is responsible. They just see that something’s not working.

Sematext’s power comes from connecting the dots, across synthetics, logs, and metrics so you can move from symptom to root cause quickly, with context at every step.

This Data Correlation guide, we walk you through three common cross connection investigation paths:

  • Metrics to Logs ↔ Logs to Metrics: Go from system or service metrics (like CPU spikes or disk pressure) to logs that explain why they happened and vice versa.
  • Synthetics to Logs: Start with a failed or slow browser/API test and trace the issue into backend logs for root cause analysis.
  • Synthetics to Metrics: Correlate synthetic check failures with system-level or service-specific performance metrics to uncover underlying resource bottlenecks.

These aren’t just theoretical workflows, they’re what make troubleshooting faster and more effective.

Why Correlation Matters

Single-point monitoring (just logs, just metrics, just uptime checks) shows you a part of the picture. But only when these are linked you can:

  • Understand both user impact and internal system state
  • Investigate without jumping between disconnected tools
  • Reduce meantime-to-resolution (MTTR)
  • Identify patterns and dependencies across multiple layers of your stack

Whether you're monitoring infrastructure, services, APIs, or frontend, connecting Synthetics, Logs, and Metrics turns isolated events into actionable insights.

Data Flow

Here’s a simplified view of how synthetic checks, logs, and metrics fit into your system architecture:

  • A user/browser initiates a Synthetics check.
  • The request flows through: Public endpoint → Backend services → Database
  • Along this path:
  • Synthetics capture what the user sees (e.g., response time, errors, UI behavior).
  • Logs are generated by backend services and infrastructure components and databases.
  • Metrics are collected from hosts, containers, pods, services, and the database.

Sematext Correlation Diagram