Whitepapers Observability Metrics Cloud Costs
The Cost Crisis in Metrics Tooling
In her February 2024 piece The Cost Crisis in Observability Tooling, Charity explained why the cost of tools built atop the three pillars of metrics, logs, and traces—observability 1.0 tooling—is not only soaring at a rate many times higher than your traffic increases, but has also become radically disconnected from the value those tools can deliver. Too often, as costs go up, the value you derive from these tools declines.
This material is dense, and not widely understood. In this companion piece, Charity takes a slower, deeper dive into the cost models and tradeoffs involved with metrics-backed tooling. You'll learn:
- Metrics are a (very) mature technology
- What exactly is a metric?
- What is a custom metric?
- Calculating the footprint of an example metric
- Costs are hard to predict, and harder to connect to value
- How experienced teams control costs
- Using metrics for their intended purpose
- The observability 2.0 cost model is very different
- Structured logs are the bridge to observability 2.0
- High cardinality is not the enemy! It’s your friend and ally
- The sociotechnical consequences of better tooling
- and more.
Download the whitepaper now.
