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Common Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about base14 Scout observability platform

Product & Platform

What is Scout from base14?
Scout is our observability platform that consolidates all observability signals into a single unified data lake, providing a comprehensive view of your production environment. Learn more about Scout features in our platform overview.
How is Scout different from traditional monitoring tools?
Scout eliminates the need for multiple monitoring tools by providing a single observability data lake for all observability signals. It's built on OpenTelemetry standards and offers real-time monitoring and lightning fast exploratory querying capabilities. See our comparison with traditional tools.
What kind of support does Scout provide?
Scout provides proactive expert support including custom dashboard design, alert optimization, noise reduction, performance tuning, and regular check-ins (weekly) and quarterly reviews with your technology teams. Contact our support team.

Technical & Integration

Why is base14 Scout faster than other tools?

base14 utilizes the best in class open source analytics database technologies to build your observability data lake. We ensure efficient hardware is allocated and monitored real-time to ensure that your data is always available, at warp speed. Our architecture delivers sub-second query responses even on massive datasets.

Can I deploy Scout in my own cloud account?

Yes! We offer BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) deployment where base14 Scout runs entirely in your AWS, GCP or Azure account. Your observability data never leaves your infrastructure, ensuring complete data sovereignty and compliance with strict regulatory requirements.

Can Scout scale with our growing infrastructure?

Absolutely. Scout is designed to scale horizontally and can handle petabytes of data with consistent performance. Our cloud-native architecture automatically scales to meet your needs, from startups to enterprise deployments.

How much log data can Scout handle?

Scout can ingest millions of logs per second and store them for months with our tiered storage system. Our advanced compression reduces storage costs by up to 90% compared to other tools, allowing you to keep all your logs without sampling.

Can I search through historical logs?

Yes! Our tiered storage system allows you to pull records from the past on demand. You can search through months of historical data with the same fast query performance, thanks to our optimized storage and indexing architecture.

What types of metrics can Scout collect?

Scout can collect any type of metric from your applications and infrastructure including counters, gauges, histograms, and summaries. We support high-cardinality metrics and can handle millions of unique time series.

Can Scout handle high-cardinality metrics?

Yes! Scout is built to handle high-cardinality metrics at scale. Our platform can efficiently store and query millions of unique time series without the performance degradation seen in traditional monitoring tools.

How does Scout handle high-volume tracing?

Scout can handle traces with 100,000+ spans efficiently. Our distributed tracing engine is built to scale with your architecture, providing sub-second query performance even for complex trace analysis across thousands of services.

How does Scout help with debugging microservices?

Scout provides end-to-end visibility of request flows, automatic service dependency mapping, and correlation with logs and metrics. You can quickly identify which service is causing latency, trace errors to their source, and understand the impact of service changes.

How does Scout APM help with performance optimization?

Scout APM provides visibility into RED metrics (Rate, Errors, Duration) across your entire application stack. It helps you identify slow queries, N+1 problems, and performance bottlenecks before they impact users, with automatic anomaly detection and smart alerting.

What technologies does Scout support?
Scout is built on OpenTelemetry standards and can integrate seamlessly with most mainstream platforms and languages including Python, Java, Node.js, Go, .NET, and more. View our complete integration library.
Is there a risk of vendor lock-in with Scout?

No, Scout is built on open-source technologies and OpenTelemetry standards, ensuring zero vendor lock-in and full transparency. Your data remains portable and you maintain complete control over your observability infrastructure.

What's the difference between SaaS and BYOC deployment?

SaaS is our fully-managed cloud offering (fastest setup, we handle all infrastructure). BYOC deploys base14 Scout in your cloud account (you control infrastructure, we manage the platform). BYOC is ideal for teams with strict data residency, compliance, or security requirements.

Which cloud providers support BYOC deployment?

We support BYOC deployment on AWS, GCP and Azure Cloud. The base14 team handles the complete setup and ongoing platform management, so you get control without operational burden.

What languages and frameworks does Scout APM support?

Scout APM supports all OpenTelemetry-compatible languages and frameworks, including Java, Python, Node.js, Go, .NET, Ruby, and more. If it works with OpenTelemetry, it works with Scout - no proprietary agents required.

Pricing & Business

How does Scout's pricing work?
Scout offers a usage-based pricing model that's up to 90% cheaper than a traditional observability suite. You only pay for what you use, with no upfront costs, hidden fees, or overage charges. Request a custom quote.
How does base14 Scout reduce costs?

base14 Scout reduces data storage costs by up to 90% compared to other tools. We achieve this through best-in-class compression algorithms, efficient hardware utilization, and intelligent data retention policies.

Do you offer a free trial or pilot program?
Yes, we offer a pilot program for qualified teams to experience Scout's capabilities with your actual production data. Contact us to learn more about our pilot program.
How does Scout reduce log management costs?

Through intelligent compression, tiered storage, and volume-based pricing, Scout reduces log storage costs by up to 90%. Unlike other platforms, we don't charge for log ingestion or user seats, only for storage and compute used.

What happens to our data if we decide to leave?

Your data is yours. We provide full data export capabilities and support for migrating to any OpenTelemetry-compatible platform. There are no penalties or fees for leaving, and we'll assist with the transition process.