Ingestion controls

Sample trace traffic by host, service or endpoint, without touching your code.

1 min read Updated Oct 21, 2026 Sentinel Platform Team

apmsamplingingestioncost

What this controls #

Ingestion controls set how much trace traffic each host, service or endpoint sends. A rate set here is applied as spans arrive, so you reduce ingest and cost without redeploying an agent or changing an SDK configuration.

Scopes #

Hosts — a rate for each machine reporting.
Services — a rate for each service.
Endpoints — a rate for each route a service serves.

Start at the broadest scope that helps. Sampling by host is usually the first lever; sampling by endpoint is the one that removes the least useful data.

Rates #

100% — all traffic
50% — half
25% — a quarter
10%, 1%, 0.1%, 0.01%

Rates below 1% keep the requests that are useful for shape and stop keeping individual slow ones. Combine with a retention filter that keeps errors at a higher rate.

Applying a rate #

Open APM → Ingestion controls.
Choose the scope you are editing.
Select one or more rows, pick a rate, and apply.

Bulk editing applies to the whole selection at once, which is how you bring a fleet of hosts down in one step.

Reading the effect #

The page shows the current rate beside every row. Change one scope, then watch Services and latency to confirm the traffic figures moved the way you expected.

Sampling is not the same as retention

A rate decides what is accepted. A retention filter decides what is kept once accepted. Use sampling for volume, and retention filters to keep errors in full.

Sample a noisy non-production environment hard before touching production. The saving is immediate and the risk is nil.