Protect Yourself Against Spikes in Events with Spike Protection

You have a set number of events you’re able to send Sentry every month based on your plan. Go over that number and you’ll have exceeded your quota. You likely have a general range of expected events based on your own history and codebase, making this all pretty straightforward.

Straightforward, that is, until everything goes to hell.

Maybe your site falls over or you launch a new product and tons of new little unexpected bugs immediately pop up. Whatever the case may be, there are times you may suddenly see a spike in events that launches you towards your quota much faster than expected. We’d prefer you not have to worry too much about that happening, which is why we provide Spike Protection.

What is Spike Protection?

Just what it sounds like — protection against spiking event volume. It could be a rogue bug killing your quota or an overall influx of events caused by adding Sentry to a new part of your application. Whatever the cause, spike protection will prevent those unexpected spikes from unexpectedly evaporating your quota.

How does it work?

It’s pretty simple. We take your hourly event usage over the past 24 hours, get the average, and factor in a multiplier to get an hourly ‘spiking limit.’ Once you’ve reached that limit, we’ll start dropping future events — this is enforced on a events/per minute basis to ensure you don’t lose complete visibility for an entire hour.

What counts as a spike?

A spike is when you are sending significantly more events that you normally do (this is all in the context of the past 24 hours). If you continue to send high event volume, your ‘spiking limit’ will continue to increase — therefore you should act as soon as possible when a spike occurs.

How will I know when a spike is occurring?

Aside from any alert notifications that might get triggered, you’ll also get an email if spike protection is activated and you’re currently at or above 25% of your monthly quota. If you are below 25% of your quota and want to know if spike protection has kicked in, you can visit your Usage and Billing page within Sentry.

Can I turn Spike Protection off?

Yes. This setting is under the same Usage and Billing page noted above and seen below:

That’s it! This feature is available (and automatically turned on) for every plan from Hobbyist on up. If you have any questions, please reach out. As always, our Support Engineers are here to help. And also to code. But mostly to help.