# Metrics Cardinality Analytics

Rapidly analyzing high cardinality fields is key for effective observability. It helps identify specific issues and their causes, like finding a user or a specific endpoint that is causing problems.

Metrics Cardinality Analytics help you determine if you have excessive number of distinct metrics that lead to lower performance in your system. See [Cardinality](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.2.5/glossary/#cardinality).

Because metrics cardinality is the number of unique combinations of metric names and their labels or dimensions, it determines the possible number of time series in your data.

- While **high cardinality** metrics lead to detailed analysis and troubleshooting, they can also complicate data management and **reduce query performance**.

- Higher cardinality increases the number of items to iterate over during queries, which **affects efficiency**.

- With metrics tools where pricing depends on distinct tag combinations, eliminating spurious values can lead to **cost savings**.

- When you define labels carefully, you can manage cardinality in your data, **remediating the risk** of increase in time series as the volume of ingested data grows.

- High cardinality is common in cloud-native environments, and can result from **migrating legacy infrastructure** to a new format.

## Determine metrics cardinality

1. Navigate to the Metrics Cardinality Analytics by clicking the **Metrics** tab, and selecting **Cardinality Analytics**:

See [Reported Cardinality Measurements](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.2.5/metrics-cardinality-analytics/#reported-measurements) for details of the report.

- Report by label
   - Report by metric

2. By default, the report computes cardinality by Label. This example reports the overall cardinality as **All cardinality: 294,885**.

3. When you have a very large number of distinct labels, you can search for specific ones by name.

Here, click **Select a label**, and choose a tracked label from the drop-down, `agent`,

And specify its value from **Select a value** drop-down, `otelcol`.

4. The result shows the cardinality of the label `agent=otelcol`; here, it has the cardinality of **18**.

5. Click the selector next to **Show Cardinality** page label, and select **by metric**. The table resets to show the calculations by **Metric**.

6. When you have a very large number of distinct metrics or labels, you can search for specific ones by name.

Here, click **Select a metric**, and choose a tracked metric from the drop-down.

7. Observe that in this example, the cardinality of the metric `aws_autoscaling_group_and _warm_pool_total_capacity` is **10**.

8. To further refine your investigation, you can select a label that applies to that metric from the **Select a label** drop-down,

And specify its value from **Select a value** drop-down.

9. The result shows the cardinality of the metric with specified label value; here, it has the cardinality of **1**.

## Adjust cardinality report

By default, the interface limits the display to the **top 10** entries by **Series Count**, yet you can easily change the display.

The demonstrations here build on top of the results [Report by label, step 5](https://docs.kloudfuse.com/platform/3.2.5/metrics-cardinality-analytics/#by-label-step-5).

### Reverse sort

To show the **bottom** entries, change the reporting order.

1. Click the sort order option next to **limit to**, and select **bottom** from the drop-down.

2. You can see that the interface now displays the bottom results.

### Change sort

To sort by the **Value Count** of entries instead of the default **Series Count**, change the sort option.

1. Click the **Series Count** selection next to **by**, and select **Value Count** from the drop-down.

2. You can see that the interface now displays the entries in order of **Value Count**, with the `explorer` label at the top.

### Increase number of entries

To display all results in a table, you can increase the limit.

1. Click the number next to **limit to**, and select a new value from the drop-down.
   Here, the new limit will be **25**.

2. You can see that the interface now displays more than 10 results; there are 22 in this example.

### Change the time interval

The default reporting time interval is for the **preceding 5 minutes**.

|     |     |
| --- | --- |
|  | The UI supports the maximum time interval of 5 minutes. However, it reports on **any** contiguous 5 minutes. |

1. To change the reporting time interval:

2. Click the **Last 5 minutes** selector at the top right of the interface.

3. In the **Calendar picker**, change the **From** and **To** parameters.

Notice that the default settings are for the last 5 minutes. This change is to report data for the last 1 minute:

From
   Change from `now-5m` to `now-1m`

To
   Keep `now`

4. \[Optional\] To specify local time you use in the browser, toggle the **Disable UTC** selector.
5. Click **Apply Time Range**.

2. The interface now displays the measurements and charts for the specified time interval.

### Reported Cardinality Measurements

Metrics cardinality reports on these measurements:

- **Label**: The name of the label. Only in **Label Cardinality** report.
- **Metric**: The name of the metric. Only in **Metric Cardinality** report.
- **Series Count**: The number of series that contain the label or metric, depending on the report. In both **Label Cardinality** and **Metric Cardinality** reports.
- **Series Percentage**: The percent of the series in the system that contain that label or metric, in the specified time period, depending on the report. If all the series contain the label or metric, all show 100%. In both **Label Cardinality** and **Metric Cardinality** reports.
- **Value Count (1h)**: The number of distinct values for the label in the hour preceding the **To** specification of the time interval. When specifying last 5 minutes, this is equivalent to `now-1h`. Only in **Label Cardinality** report.
- **Value Count**: This value count is for the specified time interval. By default, for the last 5 minutes, `now-5m`. Only in **Label Cardinality** report.
- **Value Chart**: The distribution of value counts over the specified 1 hour interval. Only in **Label Cardinality** report.
- **Series Chart**: The distribution of series counts over the specified 1 hour interval. In both **Label Cardinality** and **Metric Cardinality** reports.