Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

In this short, our software engineer Zhu Jiekun, explains how retroactive sampling can reduce trace traffic and ingestion costs by sending minimal data for sampling decisions and retrieving full spans only when needed—at the cost of added system complexity. Resources for Further Learning.

This episode of Telemetry Talks explores the evolution of an OTLP/gRPC tracing pipeline for VictoriaTraces within OpenTelemetry and VictoriaMetrics, including a shift from standard gRPC-Go to a simplified HTTP/2-based implementation to reduce complexity and improve flexibility. Together with the our guest, Jiekun, we revisited the VictoriaMetrics KubeCon talk ideas on tail-based and retroactive sampling — and their impact on the broader OpenTelemetry community.

VictoriaMetrics Cloud continues to mature as a secure, reliable, and cost-efficient observability platform. With PrivateLink now available across all regions, including Frankfurt, users can operate entirely without exposure to the public internet. Blue-green cluster deployments enable seamless, zero-downtime updates, while incremental backups ensure storage efficiency by capturing only what has changed. Operational visibility is improved with clearer alert states, showing Firing and Resolved conditions upfront. Security enhancements include stronger password policies and expanded authentication safeguards.

VictoriaMetrics continues to enhance usability and developer experience with new built-in capabilities. A lightweight UI now provides clear client setup instructions, simplifying onboarding, while an integrated inspector offers powerful debugging tools directly within the platform. Default tenant configuration further streamlines initial setup, reducing friction for new deployments. In addition, the MCP Server is now included by default in VictoriaMetrics Cloud deployments, eliminating the need for manual installation and making advanced monitoring workflows more accessible out of the box.