What Is the Saturation Golden Signal?
The saturation golden signal reflects how heavily the most constrained resource of a service is utilized, whether CPU, memory, I/O, or a work queue. It indicates the headroom remaining before performance degrades or requests are dropped. Because saturation tends to precede failure, it often serves as a leading indicator.
Why it matters
A service can look healthy on latency and errors right up until a resource fills. Tracking saturation warns that capacity is running out before users feel it.
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