# Benchmarking Deep Learning Models for Anomaly Detection in Real-World Cloud Telemetry

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.15818 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.15818/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 12 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Oct 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Learning Phrase Representations using RNN Encoder-Decoder for Statistical Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.1078/) (2014)
- [Detecting Spacecraft Anomalies Using LSTMs and Nonparametric Dynamic Thresholding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.04431/) (2018)
- [Anomaly Transformer: Time Series Anomaly Detection with Association Discrepancy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.02642/) (2021)
- [Evaluating Real-time Anomaly Detection Algorithms - the Numenta Anomaly Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.03336/) (2015)
- [Anomaly Detection and Failure Root Cause Analysis in (Micro)Service-Based Cloud Applications: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.12378/) (2021)
- [Anomaly Detection in Large-Scale Cloud Systems: An Industry Case and Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.09047/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Modern cloud platforms generate high-dimensional, noisy telemetry from thousands of microservices. Unlike classical anomaly detection benchmarks, cloud anomalies are short-lived, irregular, and largely non-periodic, making timely detection challenging. We present an empirical benchmark of deep learning models for anomaly detection using a real-world IBM Cloud Console dataset. We evaluate GRU, Transformer, TimesNet, and Autoformer architectures using the Numenta Anomaly Benchmark (NAB), a timing-aware metric that accounts for early detection and false alarms. TimesNet achieves the highest NAB scores due to strong early-detection sensitivity. Transformer models also detect anomalies early but incur higher false-positive rates. An improved GRU autoencoder, incorporating robust scoring and persistence rules, achieves competitive performance with a more stable false-alarm profile. Overall, the modest performance differences suggest that real cloud anomalies are dominated by short-term deviations rather than persistent periodic structure, emphasizing the importance of timing-aware evaluation and robust post-processing.
