flood protection

[noamdeul]

Problem Statement

Currently, Sentry does not have built-in flood protection mechanisms to limit the number of identical issues reported within a specified timeframe. This can lead to several problems:

Noise and Alert Fatigue: When a single issue is triggered multiple times in a short period, it can overwhelm users with alerts, leading to alert fatigue and making it harder to identify and prioritize other critical issues.

Resource Consumption: Excessive reporting of the same issue can consume unnecessary resources, both on Sentry's infrastructure and on the client-side, potentially leading to increased costs.

Performance Impact: The flood of identical issues can impact the performance and responsiveness of the Sentry dashboard, making it difficult for users to interact with the platform effectively.

Solution Brainstorm

To address this issue, the following solutions are proposed:

Rate Limiting Configuration:

Introduce a rate limiting feature that allows users to configure a threshold for the number of identical issues reported within a specified timeframe. Once this threshold is exceeded, additional occurrences of the same issue would be dropped or ignored for the rest of the timeframe. Example configuration: max_occurrences_per_timeframe: 10 occurrences per 1 hour.

Adaptive Flood Protection:

Implement an adaptive flood protection mechanism that automatically detects and mitigates the flood of identical issues. The system could temporarily suppress reporting of an issue if it detects an unusually high volume of the same issue in a short period.

Notification Controls:

Allow users to configure notification preferences for flood scenarios, such as aggregating multiple identical alerts into a single summary alert or pausing notifications for repeated issues. Customizable Thresholds and Timeframes:

Provide flexible configuration options for thresholds and timeframes to accommodate different use cases and project requirements. Users should be able to set different thresholds for different types of issues or environments (e.g., production vs. staging).

Dashboard Indicators:

Add visual indicators or warnings on the Sentry dashboard to inform users when flood protection is active and when issues are being suppressed, ensuring transparency and awareness. These solutions aim to enhance Sentry's usability, improve alert management, and optimize resource usage, ultimately providing a more efficient and user-friendly experience.

Product Area

Issues

[getsantry[bot]]

Assigning to @getsentry/support for routing ⏲️

[getsantry[bot]]

Routing to @getsentry/product-owners-issues for triage ⏲️

[scttcper]

@noamdeul we do currently offer spike protection and rate limiting and I believe we're working on a project to increase grouping when issues are very similar discussion here