Documentation Grafana Cloud Observe and act Alert and measure reliability SLO Additional configuration Additional data sources

Configure additional data sources for SLOs

You can create Grafana SLOs against data sources other than the default Grafana Cloud Mimir data source.

An SLO uses a source data source, which the SLI query is executed against, and a target data source, to remote write the recorded series to. The two can be the same data source or different ones. Refer to select the source and target data sources for more information.

Supported data sources

You can use the following as the source data source:

• Mimir (Grafana Cloud Prometheus Metrics)
• Prometheus-compatible data source

The target data source must be a Mimir or other Prometheus-compatible data source that accepts recording rules. Refer to configure a target data source.

When creating SLOs on Splunk, AppDynamics or Graphite data sources, the target data source is not selectable and is always the default provisioned Grafana Cloud Mimir.

Before you begin

• Verify that you have Query permissions to the data source. You can verify permissions in the data source configuration.
• If the data source is backed by Grafana Cloud, make sure you have a Grafana Cloud Access Policy with the scopes it needs over the appropriate realms:
  • A source data source needs metrics:read.
  • A target data source needs both metrics:read and metrics:write.

Add a data source for your SLO

To add a data source to use with your SLO, you first need to add it as a data source in Grafana.

1. In the Grafana Cloud sidebar, click Connections and then Data sources.

2. Click Add data source.

3. In the list of data sources, click the data source type you want to add. For a Grafana Mimir data source, click Prometheus. The data source configuration page opens.

4. Enter a name for the data source.

5. Enter the server URL for the data source you want to use.

6. Enter the authentication details for the data source. If you use a Cloud Access Policy, refer to how to authorize a service using an access policy token.

7. Click Save & test. The message “Successfully queried the Prometheus API” displays.

You can now select the new data source as the source data source in the SLO wizard.

Configure a target data source

The target data source stores the recording rules that Grafana generates for the SLO. Grafana evaluates those rules and writes the results to the target.

The target is also read from. Recording rules for the longer SLI time windows are calculated from the shorter recorded ones, and the SLO burn-rate alert rules and dashboards query the recorded SLO metrics.

To be used as a target, a data source must:

• Be a Mimir or other Prometheus-compatible data source.
• Have Allow as recording rules target enabled, in Advanced settings > Alerting.
• Use a Grafana Cloud Access Policy with both the metrics:read and metrics:write scopes.

Configure data source-managed recording rules

Grafana evaluates SLO recording rules for you. A small number of legacy Grafana Cloud stacks instead use data source-managed recording rules. On these stacks the SLI query and the recording rules use a single data source, and the Create SLO wizard shows one Select data source picker instead of two.

These stacks have extra requirements. The data source must:

• Be a Grafana Mimir data source. In Advanced settings > Performance, set Prometheus type to Mimir.
• Have the Ruler API enabled, using the -ruler.enable-api CLI flag. Grafana expects the Query API and the Ruler API to be under the same URL. You can’t provide a separate URL for the Ruler API.
• Use a Grafana Cloud Access Policy with the metrics:read, rules:read, and rules:write scopes over the appropriate realms.

Grafana Cloud customers who want to switch to Grafana-managed recording rules for SLO should submit a support ticket through Grafana Cloud to request the change or coordinate with their Grafana account team as needed. Note that this is a stack-wide plugin configuration.