Is CPU Utilization the Only Measure of Performance?

Totally on point! It's about understanding observability and gathering metrics that come from the user's perspective. When performance dips, that user-level data is golden for spotting issues. Hardware metrics are important, but knowing where time is spent at the application level can lead to more effective solutions. Remember, not every performance hiccup will show up in CPU stats, so keep digging deeper!

Agreed, CPU is not everything. It's essential to keep an eye on other factors like latency and throughput, as well as overall user experience. Those metrics often give you much more insight into what's really happening with your applications.

I get why you're asking this. Scaling is often confused with actual performance needs. High CPU usage triggers the need to scale, but improving performance might require a different approach altogether. Bottlenecks can exist anywhere — memory, disk, or even network issues could hinder performance without the CPU being fully utilized. Just pumping in more CPU might not solve your problems and can be unnecessarily expensive.

You're definitely not alone in feeling this way. A lot of teams jump straight to adding more CPU without addressing the underlying issues. Performance problems can stem from various places like latency or I/O, not just CPU usage. It's crucial to consider the entire stack because the root cause might be elsewhere, and sometimes, performance issues can occur even when CPU isn't maxed out.

Also, if an application is constantly hitting the limits of its resources, that's a red flag. You often need to dig in and investigate every possible bottleneck rather than just throwing more CPU at it.