Adaptive monitoring dynamically optimizes the monitoring frequency of metrics with respect to system constraints. One or more metrics are monitored. The monitoring includes receiving a value for the metric and evaluating the received metric value. If the evaluation is determined to affect one or monitoring parameters, or if an environment-based event occurs the metrics are adapted. Adapting metrics includes removing or adding a metric based on each metric's correlation to the affected monitoring parameter or environment based trigger. The frequencies of the metrics are optimized based on the available resources.