Twelve stored customer series feed three query rows; the larger input store remains in place.

High-cardinality labels increase stored series before anyone queries them

A Prometheus series is identified by a metric name and its complete label set. Adding customer or request identity to a counter can create many series even when every dashboard immediately sums those identities away. Query aggregation changes the returned result; it does not remove the raw series that were ingested. ...

January 10, 2028 · 6 min · XB Field Notes