The absence of alerts is not evidence of health.
Silence can mean success, missing coverage, broken telemetry, or thresholds set too high.
Interpretation
An alerting system sees only what it was taught to recognize. Quiet dashboards cannot distinguish healthy users from dead instrumentation. Pair symptom-based alerts with telemetry health, expected traffic, and periodic tests so silence itself becomes interpretable rather than comforting.
Practice
- Alert on user-visible symptoms and telemetry gaps.
- Track expected request or event volume.
- Exercise alert paths with controlled tests.
Anti-pattern
Celebrating zero alerts after accidentally disabling the collector.