Policy types

Here are the available policy types and their definitions. For more information on each of the policy types, refer to the Components documentation.

Policy type	Definition
`always_sample`	Samples every trace that it encounters. It’s useful for debugging or when you need to capture all data.
`probabilistic`	Samples a certain percentage of traces randomly. You can specify the sampling rate.
`latency`	Samples traces based on their duration. You can set a threshold, and any trace that exceeds that threshold is sampled.
`boolean_attribute`	Samples based on boolean attributes.
`status_code`	Samples traces based on their status code (for example, errors, success). This is very useful for capturing traces that contain errors.
`string_attribute`	Samples traces based on the values of string attributes.
`trace_state`	Samples based on the values of the TraceState.
`rate_limiting`	Samples based on the rate of spans per second.
`span_count`	Samples based on the number of spans within a trace.
`ottl_condition`	Samples based on OpenTelemetry Transformation Language (OTTL) conditions. This allows very complex and specific filtering.
`and`	Allows you to combine multiple policies using a logical “AND” operation.
`composite`	Allows for a combination of samplers, with ordering, and rate allocation per sampler. This creates very flexible sampling strategies.
`drop`	Allows for a combination of specific conditions to discard unwanted traces before any other rules are evaluated. When you create a drop policy, make sure you also have an active sampling policy (like `always_sample`) otherwise all of your traces will be dropped.

Was this page helpful?