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ECO-OBS-TRACE-001

Name: Unsampled high-volume tracing

Category: Observability & Telemetry

Family: Tracing

Primary layer: network

System layers: network

Description

Tracing is enabled for high-volume paths without sampling, retention limits, or cardinality controls.

Impact

  • type: network
  • confidence: 0.75
  • notes: Added as part of the 0.3.0 expansion to capture cross-system sustainability and operational waste.

Detection

  • method: static-or-runtime
  • confidence: 0.55
  • runtime_validation_required: Yes

Remediation

  • guidance: Apply adaptive sampling, route-specific sampling, shorter retention, and cardinality controls.
  • tradeoffs: May require architecture, product, or operations review rather than a local code change.

Cost Dimensions

  • compute: medium
  • memory: medium
  • network: high
  • storage: high
  • human_time: medium
  • carbon: medium
  • water: low

Amplification

  • scales_with_users: Yes
  • scales_with_data_volume: No
  • scales_non_linearly: No

Temporal Behavior

  • startup_only: No
  • steady_state: Yes
  • burst_sensitive: Yes
  • time_degradation: No

Runtime Evidence

  • trace volume
  • collector CPU
  • observability billing

Pattern examples

No pattern examples provided.

Remediation examples

No remediation examples provided.

Metadata

  • catalog_version: 0.4.0
  • status: draft
  • source: catalog expansion recommendations applied 2026-05-21