Alert on Latency and Error Spikes
Fire alerts before users feel the pain.
Alert on Latency and Error Spikes is a free MLOps Academy lesson on CoddyKit — lesson 4 of 4. You can read the complete lesson below for free — then practise it hands-on in the browser with a built-in code editor and a 24/7 AI tutor. It is part of the MLOps Academy learning path, one of 4 lessons in the course, and your progress syncs across the web and the CoddyKit app.
Dashboards Do Not Page You
A dashboard only helps when someone is looking. Alerts watch your metrics around the clock and reach out the moment something breaks. 🚨
Alert Before Users Feel It
The goal is to fire before users notice. Catch the slow creep in latency or errors while there is still time to react.
An Alert Rule
An alert rule is a PromQL expression plus a condition. When the expression stays true long enough, the alert starts firing.
Alert on High Latency
Watch your p99 latency and fire when it crosses a threshold, say half a second, signaling the model is too slow.
histogram_quantile(0.99, rate(predict_seconds_bucket[5m])) > 0.5Alert on Error Spikes
Fire when the error ratio climbs above a small fraction, like five percent of requests failing over the last few minutes.
rate(errors_total[5m]) / rate(predictions_total[5m]) > 0.05Use a For Duration
The for clause requires the condition to hold for a sustained period before firing, so a one-second blip never wakes anyone.
- alert: HighLatency
expr: histogram_quantile(0.99, rate(predict_seconds_bucket[5m])) > 0.5
for: 5mLabel the Severity
Attach labels like severity to each rule. They let you route a critical page differently from a low-priority warning.
labels:
severity: criticalAdd Helpful Annotations
Use annotations to write a clear summary and a runbook link, so whoever gets paged knows what broke and what to do.
annotations:
summary: "p99 latency above 500ms on model-api"Alertmanager Routes It
Prometheus decides when to fire, but Alertmanager handles delivery, grouping, and silencing of those alerts.
Send It Somewhere Human
Route alerts to a receiver people actually watch, like Slack or PagerDuty, instead of an inbox nobody reads.
receivers:
- name: oncall
slack_configs:
- channel: "#ml-alerts"Tune Out the Noise
Too many false alarms cause alert fatigue and people stop reading. Tune thresholds and for durations until every page is worth waking for.
Quick Check
You want an alert that ignores momentary blips and only fires on sustained problems. What achieves that?
Recap
You wrote PromQL alert rules for latency and error spikes, used a for duration to skip blips, and routed firing alerts through Alertmanager to people. ✅
Frequently asked questions
Is the “Alert on Latency and Error Spikes” lesson free?
Yes — the full text of “Alert on Latency and Error Spikes” is free to read here on the web, and the MLOps Academy course includes 4 lessons in total. To practise it interactively (a built-in code editor and a 24/7 AI tutor) and unlock the rest of the MLOps Academy course, upgrade to CoddyKit PRO.
What will I learn in “Alert on Latency and Error Spikes”?
Fire alerts before users feel the pain. You practise MLOps Academy with hands-on code you run directly in the browser, and a 24/7 AI tutor answers your questions as you work through the lesson.
Do I need any experience to start MLOps Academy?
No prior experience is required. MLOps Academy on CoddyKit is structured for beginners through advanced learners; this is — lesson 4 of 4, so you can start here or from the beginning and move at your own pace.
How long does the “Alert on Latency and Error Spikes” lesson take?
Most CoddyKit lessons take about 5–10 minutes. Each one is bite-sized and interactive, so you make steady progress and pick up exactly where you left off across the web and the app.
Can I write and run code in this MLOps Academy lesson?
Yes. Every MLOps Academy lesson includes a built-in code editor, so you write and run real code right in your browser and get instant AI feedback — no local setup required.
All lessons in this course
- Structured Logs for Predictions
- Expose Metrics with Prometheus
- Build a Grafana Dashboard
- Alert on Latency and Error Spikes