Observability Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published Jul 16, 2026 4 min read

Trace Sampling Strategy by Service Tier

Critical services sample at 100%; low-stakes services sample at 1%. The tier model and how to apply it without losing debugging value.

Define the tiers

Tier 0: customer-critical paths (login, checkout). 100% sampling.

Tier 3: internal services with low impact. 1% head sampling.

Sample 100% of slow or error traces; 1% of healthy ones. Captures the bugs without paying for the boring traces.

Implementation: tail-sampling processor in the OTel collector. Not free; budget for it.

Service tiers shift; new services launch. Quarterly review keeps the policy current.

Cost dashboard per tier. If tier 0 cost is exploding, the implementation has a leak.