Modern observability is built on a flawed foundation: three siloed pillars - logs, metrics, and traces - each powered by different engines with separate query models, storage formats, and operational costs. Users are forced to manually correlate across systems, accept duplication, or pay high SaaS bills. But what if observability is just a data problem? One that needs a general-purpose solution instead of purpose-built compromises? This talk argues that true observability requires fast, high-cardinality queries over unsampled data at scale and at low cost. Traditional search and metrics engines were not designed for this, but column-oriented databases are. We introduce ClickStack, a fully open source, OpenTelemetry-native observability stack built around ClickHouse. It provides fast, flexible querying and efficient storage, enabling real-time visibility without compromise.
Dale McDiarmid is a Senior Principal Technologist at ClickHouse with over a decade of experience in data infrastructure, performance engineering, and product strategy. Based in Lisbon, he has held key roles at Grafana Labs, Elastic, and Attivio, specializing in database optimization, observability, and technical marketing.
