[processor/tailsampling] invert_match precedence

[hyang023]

Component(s)

processor/tailsampling

What happened?

Description

a recent fix went in to address #33656 and align with expected behavior documented at https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/blob/main/processor/tailsamplingprocessor/README.md
When there's an "inverted not sample" decision, the trace is not sampled

however, in the same README, the tail_sampling.policies[] example policy list includes this backwards compatibility policy

      {
        # Rule 1: use always_sample policy for services that don't belong to team_a and are not ready to use tail sampling
        name: backwards-compatibility-policy,
        type: and,
        and:
          {
            and_sub_policy:
              [
                {
                  name: services-using-tail_sampling-policy,
                  type: string_attribute,
                  string_attribute:
                    {
                      key: service.name,
                      values:
                        [
                          list,
                          of,
                          services,
                          using,
                          tail_sampling,
                        ],
                      invert_match: true,
                    },
                },
                { name: sample-all-policy, type: always_sample },
              ],
          },
      },

and using a collector with this fix means that service.name values [list, of, services, using, tail_sampling] no longer can have other sampling policies applied to them since their InvertNotSampled condition will override any applicable Sampled or InvertSampled

Is this change in behavior intended? And if so, what is the new recommended way to define a backwards compatibility policy?

Steps to Reproduce

1. use the tail sampling processor
2. define a set of tail sampling policies including a backwards compatibility policy

Expected Result

Expect to be able to define sampling policies for service.name values [list, of, services, using, tail_sampling]
and always_sample for any other service.name not in this list (or as specified in other policies)

Actual Result

no traces for service.name values [list, of, services, using, tail_sampling] can be exported since all are excluded as a result of InvertNotSampled

Collector version

0.104.0

Environment information

Environment

OS: (e.g., "Ubuntu 20.04")
Compiler(if manually compiled): (e.g., "go 14.2")

OpenTelemetry Collector configuration

No response

Log output

No response

Additional context

No response

[github-actions]

Pinging code owners:

• processor/tailsampling: @jpkrohling

See Adding Labels via Comments if you do not have permissions to add labels yourself.

[savar]

Another (possible) issue with invert_match precedence is (or I am just not able to do that), to do something like:

1. probabilistic-ally catch http.route == /health for 0.1%
2. probabilistic-ally catch http.route != /health for 20%

The 1st one works easily, but the second one would need to not apply to /health and therefore an invert_match seems to be required, which, even in an and type will create a do not sample decision which will override the 1st rule.

I think the issue is the same as the backwards compatibility example.

[github-actions]

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Pinging code owners:

• processor/tailsampling: @jpkrohling

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[avrong]

The issue @savar mentioned is present for my use case.

What I want to do is a sampling of grpc requests traces that would depend on condition. It is useful when an application generates lots of traces with one of requests. In this one we're not really interested in, but it is still better to be shown in smaller scale. The problem is that large amount of traces takes more disk space and has impact on Grafana dashboard requests and web UI.

It worked like this: if rpc.method == methodA, then do probabilistic sampling. Otherwise, on all other requests, don't do anything and sample them all. It involved a hacky way of doing and policy with two branches -- one with string_attribute match in one case, and other one with inverted string_match on the same list (with anchor on the match list). With previous behavior it was possible, however after v0.103.0 I couldn't find a way to do that and did not manage to implement it with regular expressions or ottl conditions.

  tail_sampling:
    policies:
      # Applies probabilistic sampling to set of methods
      - name: probabilistic-to-listed-methods
        type: and
        and:
          and_sub_policy:
            - name: spans-with-listed-methods
              type: string_attribute
              string_attribute:
                key: rpc.method
                # List of methods to which probabilistic sampling applies
                values: &probabilistic-methods
                  - methodA
            - name: probabilistic-sampling
              type: probabilistic
              probabilistic:
                sampling_percentage: 5
      # Bypasses other traces
      - name: bypass-others
        type: and
        and:
          and_sub_policy:
            - name: other-spans
              type: string_attribute
              string_attribute:
                key: rpc.method
                values: *probabilistic-methods
                # Accept all except ones in list
                invert_match: true
            - name: catch-all
              type: always_sample

It would be great to have ability to do similar conditions again, probably in some other form.

[karinhawk]

Our team ran into this issue during an upgrade of the collector where our sampling stopped working because of this. The only way so far we've managed to find a workaround for the backwards compatibility policy is a bit horrible but if anyone is in a pinch it works!

Because "inverted not sample" policies take precedence above everything else, don't use it for the backwards compatible policy, instead use a "not sample" decision where you enable regex on an attribute to enable sampling e.g. sampling:true with true being a negative match.

The processor uses grep/re2 syntax, meaning it doesn't support the usual way of negative matching - SO post
However, the correct regex can be generated using this website made by the commenter in that post.

For negative matching on the attribute so services with that attribute in their resource attributes can then be sampled later while services with that value as false are sampled 100%, it looks a little like this:

     [ 
      {
        name: 'backwards-compatibility-policy',
        type: 'and',
        and: {
          and_sub_policy: [
            {
              name: 'services-using-tail_sampling-policy',
              type: 'string_attribute',
              string_attribute: {
                key: 'sampling',
                values: [
                 '^([^t]|t(t|r(t|ut))*([^rt]|r([^tu]|u[^et])))*(t(t|r(t|ut))*(ru?)?)?$',
                ],
                enabled_regex_matching: true
              },
            },
          ],
        },
      },
      ...sampling policies
    ]

It allows you to replicate the behaviour from the backwards compatibility policy in the documentation examples, which is great, even though it's a little ugly.

EDIT: Another way to tackle this problem without being so hacky, is to include the above sampling attribute in instrumentation in services you wish to sample. Then (if you are using the loadbalancing exporter collector -> sampler collector -> exporter collector/endpoints pattern) filter on this attribute in the sampler collector, and have only those traces enter the processor, and send the others straight to a backend of choice in a separate pipeline. This means you only need to define policies in the sampler which keep specified traces, making the need for a backwards compatibility policy redundant.

[hyang023]

it could be helpful to hear from a code owner (@jpkrohling) what the intended/expected behavior is for invert sampling inside of a composite policy (e.g. should the invert-not-sample from a subpolicy apply to the scope of only that composite policy as a whole, as it did before, or should its scope extend beyond that, as it does now?)
and if so, what would be the new recommendation for implementing "backwards compatibility" policies given this breaking change?