Once upon a time there was the internet, and it was good, and it was global. We built our businesses across its networks and expanded our commerce from computer to cloud. Like with any physical trade route, the journeys are not always consistent. If your website is your flagship, your reports are your map. Sites rely on servers and it’s possible that your site might be UP in the UK but DOWN in Dallas.

We recently heard that a customer, a power user of Prometheus, was grappling with 18,000 individual rules for its metrics, because its setup involved creating an individual rule group for each generated metric. Surely there was a better, more efficient way to handle this scale of metrics? In fact, we did come up with a solution, and this blog post will walk you through how you might benefit from it too.

Visualizing trends in your logs is critical when troubleshooting an issue with your application. Using the histogram in Logs Explorer, you can quickly visualize log volumes over time to help spot anomalies, detect when errors started and see a breakdown of log volumes. But static visualizations are not as helpful as having more options for customization during your investigations.

Buying software is often the answer for busy engineering teams in search of a quick solution with minimum aftercare. But while your team may be sure of the problem, how do you go about searching for a product to fix it? Far from being the 'easy option', there is a lot you need to consider before you invest in a bought solution – user experience, cost comparisons, and support features to name a few. Let’s explore some of the considerations when making a good decision.