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Journey overview

Keep cardinality, cost, and query performance under control

Welcome to the Grafana Cloud journey that teaches you how to design a labeling strategy for your metrics and logs.

What you’ll learn

When you complete this journey, you’ll be able to:

  • Explain how label combinations multiply into unique active series and log streams
  • Inspect your own cardinality with the Cardinality tab in the Cost Management and Billing app
  • Choose metric labels deliberately and avoid unbounded values
  • Reduce existing metrics cardinality with relabeling and Adaptive Metrics
  • Decide when log data belongs in a label, in structured metadata, or in the log line
  • Move high-cardinality context to the right signal instead of deleting it
  • Link a metric spike to the exact trace with exemplars, without adding labels

Journey duration

~25-35 minutes

Script

Welcome to this journey on designing a labeling strategy for your metrics and logs in Grafana Cloud.

Labels are small decisions that add up quickly. In this journey, you’ll learn how label combinations multiply into active series and log streams, and how to inspect the cardinality of your own stack.

From there, you’ll practice choosing metric labels deliberately, reducing cardinality you already have, and deciding where log data belongs. The journey wraps up by showing how to keep high-cardinality detail on the right signal instead of deleting it.

Expect to spend about 25 to 35 minutes from start to finish.

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