“Cardinality” is a mathematical term: it’s *the number of elements in a set*... boring! So why tf does anybody care??
Well, because people think they need it, then suddenly, "$$$$$$$."
0/ When large eng orgs rely on metrics for both monitoring *and* observability, they struggle with cardinality.
This is a thread about “the two drivers of cardinality.” And which one of those we should kill. :)
🧵👇
“Cardinality” is a mathematical term: it’s *the number of elements in a set*... boring! So why tf does anybody care??
Well, because people think they need it, then suddenly, "$$$$$$$."
E.g., when I was working on Monarch at Google, there was a single gmail metric that became over 300,000,000 (!!!) distinct time series. In a TSDB, that cardinality is the unit of cost.
So again, “$$$$$$$.”
A) Monitoring: more detailed *health measurements*
B) Observability: more detailed *explanations of changes*
Let’s take these one at a time…
Consider an RPC metric that counts errors. You need to independently monitor the error rate for different methods. And so – voila – someone adds a “method” tag, and now there’s 10x the cardinality for that metric.
Put another way, you might rightly have different error budgets for different RPC methods, so their statistics must be separable.
This is the real culprit! And, frankly, should be abolished. :) Metrics cardinality is the wrong way to do observability – to explain changes.
More on that…
But this is unsustainable: each incident reveals a new failure mode, devs keep adding tags, and before long your metrics bill is out of control.
Distributed systems can fail for a staggeringly large number of reasons. *You can't use metrics cardinality to isolate each one.*
Understanding change is the central problem of observability. Effective workflows might *start* with metrics, but they must pivot towards a multi-telemetry, multi-service guided analysis.
PPS: If you’d like to discuss/debate/request-more-detail any of the above, reply to this thread or DM me!
0/ I\u2019m tired of hearing about observability replacing monitoring. It\u2019s not going to, and that\u2019s because it shouldn\u2019t.
— Ben Sigelman (@el_bhs) January 13, 2021
Observability will not _replace_ monitoring, it will _augment_ monitoring.
Here\u2019s a thread about observability, and how monitoring can evolve to fit in: \U0001f447 pic.twitter.com/lhb1WmKKMF
More from Society
Tomorrow, January 6th, MAGA chuds, Proud Boys, and white supremacists are planned to descend on Washington D.C. to contest the election. Among them will be NSC-131, a New England based neo-Nazi organization. Let's welcome them by saying hi to one of their members, Eddie Stuart!
Edward Stuart, from Chester, New Hampshire, has been a member of Nationalist Social Club (NSC) since the very beginning and is a staple participant in their actions. He is known in NSC chats as "Carl Jung" and is well connected in the New England Nazi scene.
2/
NSC-131 is a neo-Nazi group that was started in Massachusetts in early 2020 by Chris Hood. You can learn more about NSC and it's members in these threads:
Eddie describes his ideology as "Esoteric Hitlerism" which is an occult form of Nazism that literally worships Adolf Hitler as a god, or, specifically, as an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. Here is Ed holding the RigVeda with some of his occult Nazi pals. Interesting Ed!
4/
Much of this ideological insight was gained from Eddie's Twitter, where he originally used his "Carl Jung" persona and reposts explicit neo-fascist content and racist memes. In one edited picture, Eddie can be seen at an NSC event in late June 2020 holding a Nazi Sonnenrad flag
5
Edward Stuart, from Chester, New Hampshire, has been a member of Nationalist Social Club (NSC) since the very beginning and is a staple participant in their actions. He is known in NSC chats as "Carl Jung" and is well connected in the New England Nazi scene.
2/
NSC-131 is a neo-Nazi group that was started in Massachusetts in early 2020 by Chris Hood. You can learn more about NSC and it's members in these threads:
1/ Let\u2019s talk about a III%er turned Proud Boy turned Resist Marxism turned Patriot Front turned The Base affiliate.
— AntiFash Gordon (@AntiFashGordon) April 10, 2020
He now runs a new crew, the National Socialist Club, based on football hooliganism.\u2070\u2070
Some of you already know him.\u2070\u2070
His name is Chris Hood, of Boston, MA. pic.twitter.com/nXAxWugHcu
Eddie describes his ideology as "Esoteric Hitlerism" which is an occult form of Nazism that literally worships Adolf Hitler as a god, or, specifically, as an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. Here is Ed holding the RigVeda with some of his occult Nazi pals. Interesting Ed!
4/
Much of this ideological insight was gained from Eddie's Twitter, where he originally used his "Carl Jung" persona and reposts explicit neo-fascist content and racist memes. In one edited picture, Eddie can be seen at an NSC event in late June 2020 holding a Nazi Sonnenrad flag
5
