Netflix FlameScope vs Thanos: What are the differences?

# Introduction
Netflix FlameScope and Thanos are powerful tools used for analyzing and visualizing performance data for distributed systems. They both provide different features and functionalities to help developers and system administrators understand the behavior of their systems.

1. **Scope of Visualization**: FlameScope focuses on providing visualizations for CPU flame graphs, while Thanos specializes in visualizing monitoring and observability data for distributed systems, including metrics, logs, and traces.
2. **Data Sources**: FlameScope primarily works with profiling data from individual machines, focusing on performance optimization at a low level. In contrast, Thanos consolidates and visualizes data from various sources, making it suitable for analyzing complex interactions across multiple components in a distributed system.
3. **Integrations**: Thanos offers integrations with popular monitoring systems like Prometheus, Grafana, and Cortex, allowing users to easily combine different types of data for holistic analysis. FlameScope, on the other hand, is more independent and can be used with various data sources, but may require additional setup to integrate with other systems.
4. **Scalability**: Thanos is designed to handle large amounts of monitoring data and can scale horizontally to accommodate growing system requirements. FlameScope, while efficient for individual machine profiling, may face limitations when dealing with extensive data sets from multiple sources.
5. **Query Capabilities**: Thanos provides powerful query functionalities that enable users to perform complex queries on monitoring data to extract valuable insights. FlameScope, while effective for visual representation, may lack advanced querying capabilities that are essential for in-depth analysis of distributed systems.
6. **Community and Support**: Thanos has a larger active community of users and contributors, resulting in more frequent updates, improvements, and support resources. FlameScope, being more specialized in CPU flame graph visualization, may have a smaller user base and limited community support for addressing issues and enhancing functionalities.

In Summary, Netflix FlameScope and Thanos offer distinct features for analyzing performance data, with FlameScope focusing on CPU flame graph visualization for individual machines, while Thanos specializes in monitoring and analyzing data from distributed systems with integrations, scalability, and advanced query capabilities.