Monitoring cost optimization

Topic: Monitoring basics

Reduce monitoring cost by trimming cardinality, retention, and sampling. Keep what you need for alerts and debugging. Use when monitoring cost is high.

Intent: How-to

Quick answer

  • Limit metric cardinality. Drop high-cardinality labels or metrics. One series per service not per request.
  • Reduce retention. Keep raw short; downsample for long. Drop or sample logs if needed.
  • Review what is used. Remove unused dashboards and alerts. Right-size sampling and retention.

Prerequisites

Steps

  1. Cardinality

    Audit high-cardinality metrics. Drop or aggregate. Limit labels per metric.

  2. Retention and sampling

    Shorten retention where possible. Downsample. Sample logs if cost high.

  3. Cleanup

    Remove unused dashboards and alerts. Right-size. Review quarterly.

Summary

Reduce cardinality, retention, and sampling; remove unused assets; review regularly.

Prerequisites

Steps

Step 1: Cardinality

Audit and limit cardinality; drop or aggregate.

Step 2: Retention and sampling

Reduce retention; downsample; sample logs.

Step 3: Cleanup

Remove unused; right-size; review quarterly.

Verification

  • Cost down; alerts and debugging still work.

Troubleshooting

Cost still high — Deeper cardinality cut or sampling. Lost data — Restore retention for critical metrics.

Next steps

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