Observability on a budget: what do you actually keep?

Logs, metrics and traces all get expensive. We sample traces at 5% and keep logs 7 days. What's your retention policy?

79 sparks · 16 comments

Comments

Jiho Lee · 11 likes

My manager read one article on observability costs and now it's our whole roadmap lol :)

I've seen managers do that too.

I'm more of an enthusiast than a pro, but tinkering with observability on a budget has been fun on weekends.

wait until you see the invoice

my wallet felt that

We ran the numbers on our observability spending. The payoff came later than expected!

can you share what you changed

I work with observability, and the biggest costs are the ones nobody puts in the demo.

Fair enough

Getting started with affordable observability is easier than a year ago. That part is underrated.

Good point, didn't think of that

Amir Tan · 1 likes

Would love to see actual data on observability costs instead of vibes. Anyone have links!

Narin Chai · 11 likes

I've been looking for actual cost data too.

We tried observability last quarter. Worked great for small stuff, got messy at scale!

Keeping observability costs down sounds simple until you try it with real constraints.

Good point, didn't think of that