intelligent trace sampling

Intelligent Trace Sampling

Turn 100% signal integrity into proactive operations

The Power of Non-Sampling Sampling: Perfected Tracing with MyDecisive

Conceptual overview of Intelligent Trace Sampling
Traditional tracing solutions face a significant challenge: they sample prematurely, discarding 90% or more of the data before ever determining the importance of a trace.
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SmartHub brings a paradigm shift with “Non-Sampling Sampling,” as we introduce our new intelligent approach, Perfected Sampling. Only MyDecisive delivers a perfected-sample approach to traces, providing 100% signal for debugging and analysis without incurring wasted vendor ingest costs. We send only traces that are confirmed to be perfect and/or critical, allowing you to forward these necessary traces to your vendor of choice or low cost storage.

Access to All Information

Our system tracks 100% of all spans before they leave your enterprise, allowing us to make the final sampling decision at the last possible moment—when the entire request is complete.

Always Full Context

We retain 100% of spans in memory until the ROOT_SPAN returns, providing complete information about what happened during the trace and the contents of every single span within that request.

Intelligent, Late Decisions

Sampling decisions are made with 100% fidelity, based on critical factors identified across the entire trace, including errors, anomalies, and duration patterns.

Programmable Precision

Users can define sophisticated rules to match any pattern within any span, ensuring the capture of vital traces and triggering alerts or automated actions instantly.

What is Perfected Sampling and Why It Matters

The core difference in trace sampling systems lies in the timing of the decision to keep or discard a trace, which is influenced by the context available at that moment.

Late-Decision / Perfected Sampling (MyDecisive SmartHub)

The SmartHub employs a refined mechanism known as tail-based sampling, managing all span data at scale while keeping it on-premises.

Decision Timing: End of the trace (when the ROOT_SPAN returns to the caller).

Context: Utilizes 100% of all span data and the final status of the request (error code, full duration, complex anomalies, etc.)

Advantages

  • Perfect Filtering: Decisions are made with complete information, ensuring that any trace with detected errors or anomalies is retained and sent to the vendor.

  • Zero Waste: Only traces meeting high-value criteria (error, anomaly, high latency, custom pattern) are sent, reducing noise and vendor ingest costs.

  • Sophisticated Rules: Enables programmable rules, such as retaining traces for specific user IDs or those interacting with designated legacy databases.

By adopting the late-decision approach, the SmartHub guarantees 100% signal capture of critical incidents while significantly lowering data volume and operational costs. Perfect Filtering ensures the capture of engineering errors, while zero waste reduces unnecessary costs.
Key Capabilities of the SMARTHUB

In-Stream Log Governance and Cost Savings

The SmartHub inspects each and every log line at full scale, in stream — before it is transmitted and you are charged for ingestion. MyDecisive ensures you store only the necessary logs from every service, exactly where you want them, effectively separating storage decisions from operational actions.

This capability offers several advantages:

Choose which logs to retain and which to discard before they leave your network.

Separate storage from action. Store critical logs with your SaaS vendor for real-time indexing while routing compliance-required logs to a cost-effective platform like S3 or object storage, avoiding vendor ingestion fees and long retention challenges.

Receive alerts directly on your log data in stream without needing to ingest and index everything first. You can even replay those logs to your SaaS vendor as part of the action if desired.

Create distinct, service-specific policies to classify log lines as critical, nice-to-have, or noise.

Compliance and Cost Savings Through Log Routing

Meeting compliance regulations (like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, or SOX) often necessitates retaining log data for extended periods, which can be costly with per-GB ingestion and storage fees from typical SaaS observability vendors.

The SmartHub's log routing capability enables you to enforce retention and access policies based on the type and sensitivity of the log data.

Critical Compliance Benefits

Cost Separation

Users only pay for high-value traces needed for active indexing and alerting, while long-term compliance archives are stored internally on S3 at a minimal cost per GB.

PII Control

With filtering and redaction, sensitive information can be kept off third-party vendors, significantly reducing risk exposure.

Retention Management

Organizations are not bound by arbitrary vendor retention windows, which typically range from 90 days to 1 year. Compliance archives can be easily managed within their own S3/storage bucket for the required duration.

Zero Ingestion Cost

By routing traces directly to cold storage, the costly cycle of Ingest → Index → Store is eliminated, addressing compliance costs that often burden legacy solutions.

This approach enables finance and compliance teams to establish necessary retention policies without imposing significant vendor fees on the engineering team.

Stop Sampling Blindly. Start Deciding Perfectly.

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