Unbounded Cardinality, Zero Alerts, and 14-Second Dashboard Loads: The Structural Limits of the Grafana Azure Monitor Plugin
The Grafana Azure Monitor datasource plugin connects directly to Azure Monitor at query time. On a 12-panel dashboard, that means 12 sequential ARM API calls on every open — 14 seconds before the first chart renders. It cannot feed Mimir alerting rules. It cannot attach environment labels without custom queries per panel. And promoting Azure tags as Prometheus labels explodes cardinality to thousands of series per resource group. This post documents the five structural gaps and the specific design decisions in a push-based exporter that close each one.
The Self-Silencing Anti-Pattern: Why Your Observability Stack Goes Blind When You Need It Most
The system effectively silences its own diagnostics during the moment of maximum operational need.
Why Cardinality Kills Observability Platforms (and How to Stop It)
Cardinality is the silent killer of Prometheus-based observability platforms. Here's how it happens, how to detect it early, and the label schema discipline that keeps ingestion costs sane at scale.