Comparison
MetricvsSynthetic monitoring
Metric
you record a number over time so you can see the shape of the whole system at once without reading a single log line.
An aggregated numeric time series: counters, gauges, histograms. Metrics are cheap, bounded in volume and ideal for alerting and dashboards. They cannot tell you about one specific request, which is where logs and traces take over.
Full entry →Synthetic monitoring
you run a scripted fake user journey every minute so you find out the checkout is broken before a customer tells you.
Actively probing your system from outside on a schedule. It covers the gap where real traffic is low or where a failure prevents traffic from arriving at all. It only tests the paths you scripted, so it complements real user measurement rather than replacing it.
Full entry →