Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

November 2024

Exploring OpenTelemetry Collector configurations in Grafana Cloud: a tasting menu approach

I’m a big fan of tasting menus. In the culinary world they let us sample a variety of dishes in small portions, helping us understand and appreciate different flavors and options. Inspired by this concept and a talk I gave earlier this year, I have crafted a “tasting menu” of OpenTelemetry Collector configurations in Grafana Cloud.

Why companies choose Grafana Cloud over self-hosted OSS stacks

While we all love open source technology and the community that comes with it, we don’t always have the time or resources to stand up, maintain, update, and troubleshoot a self-hosted OSS stack. This is one of the (many) reasons companies choose to implement Grafana Cloud: you get all the goodness of the open source Grafana LGTM Stack (Loki for logs, Grafana for visualization, Tempo for traces, Mimir for metrics) in a fully managed, end-to-end observability platform.

How to use OpenTelemetry and Grafana Alloy to convert delta to cumulative at scale

Migrating from other vendors becomes a lot easier with OpenTelemetry and Grafana Alloy, our distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector. But when you come from platforms that use different temporalities, such as Datadog or Dynatrace, you face a challenge integrating with a Prometheus-like ecosystem such as Grafana Cloud: Your metrics still mean the same as before, but they just don’t look right.

Leveraging OpenTelemetry and Grafana for observing, visualizing, and monitoring Kubernetes applications

Ken has over 15 years of industry experience as a noted information and cybersecurity practitioner, software developer, author, and presenter, focusing on endpoint security, big security data analytics, and Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and NIST 800-53 compliance. Focusing on strict federal standards, Ken has consulted with numerous federal organizations, including Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Census Bureau.

Grafana Loki 3.3 release: faster query results via Blooms for structured metadata

The Grafana Loki 3.3 release is here, and it brings a fresh wave of enhancements aimed at making your log management experience faster, more efficient, and more scalable. While this update includes the usual round of bug fixes and operational improvements, the standout feature is a shift in how Loki leverages Bloom filters—going from free-text search to harnessing the power of structured metadata.

5 tips to write better browser tests for performance testing and synthetic monitoring

Given the complexity of modern websites, browser testing is essential to ensure a positive user experience. With the Grafana k6 browser module, you can interact with real web browsers and simulate user interactions — like clicking, typing, or navigating pages — to collect frontend metrics, increase site reliability, and fix performance issues before they ever impact your users.

Getting Started with Google Sheets Data Source Plugin - Visualize your Spreadsheets | Grafana

Learn step-by-step how to monitor and visualize your Google Spreadsheets data by using the Google Sheets Data source plugin and view it in a Grafana Dashboard. Join Senior Developer Advocate Syed Usman Ahmad in this complete video tutorial and learn to use the Google Sheets plugin.

An easier way to manage your observability collectors | Grafana

Managing observability collectors at scale is often overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Grafana Fleet Management offers a better way to monitor, configure, and control your collectors—all from a centralized platform. With remote configuration and detailed health insights, you can quickly resolve issues, save time, and reduce manual effort.

Easily control observability collectors at scale with Fleet Management in Grafana Cloud

Managing observability workloads can quickly overwhelm even the most experienced admin. Maybe you’re dealing with multiple departments, each needing its own collector configurations and pipelines. Every time you have to run a test or roll out a change, the process is cumbersome and introduces risk. Or perhaps you’re responsible for tracking hundreds of collectors across different environments and regions. In a scenario like this, troubleshooting individual issues feels nearly impossible.

CloudWatch metrics exporter YACE is now a Prometheus community project

We’re thrilled to share that the open source Yet Another CloudWatch Exporter (YACE) is now a prometheus-community project! This move represents an exciting milestone in YACE’s journey and validates the project’s contribution to the Prometheus ecosystem. Yace was started in 2018 by Thomas Peitz, who has overseen the dramatic evolution of the CloudWatch metrics exporter ever since.

Scaling Observability for Dexory's Global Fleet of Autonomous Robots with Grafana Cloud:

Join Dexory's VP of Software, Matt MacLeod, as he explains how Dexory, a Grafana Labs customer, uses Grafana Cloud to monitor and manage a global fleet of autonomous robots for warehouse inventory. Hear about Dexory's journey from prototype to scalable observability solution, the challenges of high-frequency data collection in harsh environments, and how advanced monitoring enables proactive issue resolution. Discover Dexory’s insights on improving customer satisfaction and lowering operational costs through effective observability practices.

Grafana Beyla: what's new and what's next for the open source eBPF auto-instrumentation tool

It’s been a year since Grafana Labs announced the general availability of Grafana Beyla, our open source OpenTelemetry and Prometheus eBPF auto-instrumentation tool to help you easily get started with application observability. As a Beyla maintainer, I wanted to take a minute to reflect on what we’ve accomplished with Grafana Beyla since then, what we have learned about supporting an eBPF tool in production, and, in general, how exciting this whole journey has been.

No Code Observability with Grafana Beyla and eBPF | Explainer | Grafana

Discover how Grafana Beyla, powered by eBPF, brings no-code observability to your applications, revolutionizing how you manage applications. No more adding agents, redeployment, or tedious code changes! In this video, we break down how Grafana Beyla leverages eBPF (Extended Berkeley Packet Filter) to provide instant, reliable telemetry without touching your app’s code.

Grafana Cloud updates: redesigned dashboard filters, more ways to use RBAC, and more

We consistently roll out helpful updates and fun features in Grafana Cloud, our fully managed observability platform powered by the open source Grafana LGTM Stack (Loki for logs, Grafana for visualization, Tempo for traces, and Mimir for metrics). In case you missed them, here’s our monthly roundup of the latest and greatest Grafana Cloud updates. You can also read about all the features we add to Grafana Cloud in our What’s New in Grafana Cloud documentation.

Visualize real-time CAN-to-USB data via custom Grafana dashboards and the MQTT plugin

Martin Falch, co-owner and head of sales and marketing at CSS Electronics, is an expert on CAN bus data. Martin works closely with end users, typically OEM engineers, across diverse industries (automotive, heavy-duty, maritime, industrial). He is passionate about data visualization and has been spearheading the integration of the CANedge/CANmod with Grafana dashboards through various data sources.

Grafana release cycle: end-of-year update

It’s been another big year for Grafana. In April, we unveiled Grafana 11.0 at GrafanaCon 2024, which introduced a queryless experience with Explore Metrics and custom visualizations with Canvas panels. Since then, we’ve made improvements to data sources and visualizations in our minor releases, and just last month the 11.3 release marked the general availability of Scenes-powered dashboards.

How to work with multiple data sources in Grafana dashboards: best practices to get started

Grafana dashboards enable you to visualize and correlate data from a wide range of sources. With a centralized view of your data, you can troubleshoot faster, make better decisions, and streamline monitoring. But for those of you ramping up with Grafana, you might have a few questions about how, exactly, to create these rich dashboards featuring data from disparate sources, or even how to incorporate multiple queries from a single source into your visualization.

Deploying the Loki Helm on AWS | Grafana

One of our most requested Loki tutorials is here! Deploying the Loki Helm on AWS . In this video, we’ll walk you through the entire process of deploying the Loki Helm on AWS; from creating a Kubernetes cluster to configuring essential AWS resources to learning best practices when creating your Helm values file. If you are struggling with your first production deployment this should get you up and running so you can store your logs.

Prometheus 3.0 and OpenTelemetry: a practical guide to storing and querying OTel data

Over the past year, a lot of work has gone into making Prometheus work better with OpenTelemetry—a move that reflects the growing number of engineers and developers that rely on both open source projects. Historically, Prometheus users have faced a number of challenges when trying to work with OpenTelemetry (and vice versa).

AI Observability with Grafana with Ishan Jain (Grafana Office Hours #29)

In this Grafana Office Hours, Ishan Jain talks about AI Observability with Grafana: what it entails, factors to consider when monitoring and observing LLMs, and how to do it all with Grafana. He is joined by Senior Developer Advocate Nicole van der Hoeven. LINKS.

Creating alerts from panels in Kubernetes Monitoring: an overlooked, powerhouse feature

As a product manager here at Grafana Labs, I’ve learned that sometimes the most powerful features can sneak by unnoticed, buried in those three little dots off to the side of the panel. But what happens when one of those hidden gems suddenly becomes the star of the show? Recently, we released a new Kubernetes Monitoring feature in Grafana Cloud—an alert system you can use to create alerts from panels in the app.

Booking.com's Observability Overhaul: Unified Metrics, Logs, and User Insights | Grafana & OTel

Murugesan and Ahmadali from Booking.com's Observability Team as they dive into the journey of modernizing observability. Discover how they transformed fragmented systems into a centralized, scalable platform using OpenTelemetry and Grafana solutions. They share insights on their three-year strategy, the importance of unified metrics and logs, and overcoming challenges, from technology transitions to fostering teamwork.