How would you choose between Prometheus, Splunk, and Wavefront for a given signal? [Advanced]
Answer
I choose Prometheus for Kubernetes-native metrics and SLO alerting, Splunk for log/event search and audit investigation, and Wavefront/DX OpenExplore for high-scale dimensional metrics, analytics, and advanced alerting. The right tool depends on the signal and workflow.
Technical explanation
Metrics are best for alerting, SLOs, trends, and capacity. Logs are best for detailed events and forensic analysis. Traces are best for request-path debugging.
Prometheus is excellent close to workloads; Splunk is excellent for logs and security; Wavefront-style platforms shine as centralized metrics analytics backends.
A mature environment often uses all three with correlation links.
Hands-on example
Example decision: use Prometheus for service:error_budget_burn alerts, Grafana for SLO dashboards, Splunk for correlated logs using trace_id, and Wavefront for cross-region infrastructure analytics and anomaly detection at large scale.
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