Great answer. I managed metrics systems way back (cacti, nagios, graphite, kairosdb) and one thing that always sucked about push based metrics was coping with v

Great answer. I managed metrics systems way back (cacti, nagios, graphite, kairosdb) and one thing that always sucked about push based metrics was coping with variable volume of data coming from an uncontrollable number of sources. Scaling was a massive headache. "Scraping" helps to solve this through splitting duty across a number of "scrapers" that autodiscover sources. And by placing limits on how much it will scrape from any given metrics source, you can effectively protect the system from overload. Obviously this comes at the expense of dropping metrics from noisy sources, but as the metrics owner I say "too bad, your fault, fix your metrics". Back in the old days you had to accept whatever came in through the fire hose.