Managing high cardinality data from Prometheus

Managing high cardinality data in application monitoring is crucial for balancing detailed insights and storage costs, particularly when using tools like Prometheus and New Relic. High cardinality provides valuable granularity in data, such as unique identifiers in distributed applications, but can lead to increased resource consumption and performance issues, including higher memory usage, storage demands, and slower query performance. The blog post discusses strategies to manage high cardinality, such as configuring Prometheus with meaningful labels, using the Prometheus remote_write configuration, and employing New Relic's facilities to drop unnecessary data points or labels. It also suggests minimizing long-term storage costs by manipulating data retention settings in New Relic, allowing for real-time analysis without long-term storage expenses. The post emphasizes the importance of understanding and managing cardinality to ensure efficient monitoring, resource usage, and scalability in cloud-native environments.