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APM sampling hides frequent short event-loop stalls

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performanceUpdated Feb 24, 2026(via Exa)
Technologies:
How to detect:

Transaction sampling in APMs turns frequent short event-loop stalls (50-200ms) into noise, missing systematic patterns correlated with serialization, logging, or cache operations that span multiple endpoints.

Recommended action:

Add high-frequency event-loop lag metric (always-on signal) and correlate with sampled traces. Use lag metrics to identify when systematic stalls are occurring even when sampling misses individual events.