Graphite's data model doesn't support multidimensional metrics which is in my opinion it's biggest shortcoming. To support multidimensional data, a suitable dat

Graphite's data model doesn't support multidimensional metrics which is in my opinion it's biggest shortcoming. To support multidimensional data, a suitable data model is needed. AFAIK influxdb stores all label dimensions and the value for each data point. No matter how high your cardinality is, the storage requirement is the same. If you need to have, let say, a dimension 'client_ip' in a metrics http_response_time, that's a reasonable model. I'd argue though that outside analytics/data warehousing such high cardinality is rarely needed. That's why prometheus (can't speak for opentsdb) stores the dimensions identifying a metric (metric key/label pairs) once. For all data points it just needs to store the value which makes reading and writing less expensive. Now however VividCortex stores it's metrics, it has to choose from similar trade offs. Sure, they host it for you - still, there are open source project out there addressing exactly those issues.