> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.chronosphere.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Shape metric data

Managing the cardinality of persisted data can be challenging when determining which
metrics to send to Chronosphere Observability Platform. *Metric cardinality* is the
number of unique time series produced by a combination of metric names and their
associated labels. Cardinality is the total number of these combinations. The more
combinations there are, the greater a metric's cardinality is, and the more data
Observability Platform persists. This can affect
[your license](/administer/limits-licensing/concepts#persisted-cardinality).

<Note>
  Learn about strategies and tools you can use to
  [reduce cardinality](/control/shaping/shape-metrics/reduce-cardinality).
</Note>

Observability Platform includes various
[*shaping rules*](/control/shaping/shape-metrics/rules) to manipulate the data you
send to Observability Platform. Use metric shaping rules to reduce the metrics you
store in Observability Platform, optimize query performance, and create aliases for
expressions.

## Downsample data

[Collectors](/ingest) ingest metrics at specific intervals, based on system
configuration. This granularity of metric data can be helpful in diagnostic efforts,
but certain issues might not be served by such granularity. If you can diagnose
production issues by using a coarser granularity of metric data, *downsampling* the
data reduces the amount of data persisted to the Observability Platform database.

Downsample incoming data in Observability Platform using these methods:

* Change the Chronosphere Collector configuration by
  [changing the rate](/ingest/metrics-traces/collector/discover/scrape-configuration#global-scrape-configuration)
  at which the Collector publishes metrics to the server.
* Use [mapping rules](/control/shaping/shape-metrics/rules/mapping) to downsample metrics
  that aren't aggregated.
* Use [rollup rules](/control/shaping/shape-metrics/rules/rollup) to downsample aggregated
  metrics.

Over time, persisted data uses significant storage capacity. Observability Platform
performs [long-term downsampling](/control/shaping/shape-metrics/downsampling) to control data
storage costs while retaining important statistics.

Be aware that [late-arriving data](/administer/limits-licensing/limits/metric-limits#late-arriving-metrics)
can affect downsampling.