HOW ADAPTIVE TAIL SAMPLING WORKS IN THE OPENTELEMETRY COLLECTOR

Summary from the TLDR Data newsletter

Fixed-rate sampling often discards the rare traces needed in an incident, while ordinary tail sampling loses statistical weights. An adaptive tail sampler for the OpenTelemetry Collector buffers traces, applies ordered rules, and attaches W3C probability thresholds so downstream counts can be reweighted. It adapts by route and service, bounds memory under load, and is progressing upstream toward alpha.