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Configure Application Observability metrics

You can manage how Application Observability metrics are generated for the knowledge graph.

Metrics generation

Enable or disable metrics generation for the default provisioned Traces data source for the stack.

Beyla

Beyla can generate its own span metrics and service graph metrics. When used together with Grafana Cloud metrics generation, this can lead to duplicate series, which can display erroneous data in Application Observability. You can choose one of the following options to set it up properly:

  • Grafana Cloud Tempo generates span metrics from all traces, except those containing the following resource attribute. This option excludes traces that have the span.metrics.skip=true resource attribute.
  • Grafana Cloud Tempo disregards the deduplication resource attribute when generating metrics from spans. Selecting this option can cause duplicate metrics to be generated.

This configuration exists so that you can use Beyla metrics generation simultaneously with Grafana Cloud metrics generation.

Before you begin

Ensure the following:

  • You are familiar with your metrics coming into Grafana Cloud, including the source environment and clusters
  • You have Grafana Cloud Admin permissions

Enable metrics generation

  1. Sign into Grafana Cloud and click Observability > Configuration.
  2. Click Connect knowledge graph.
  3. Click Enable metric generation.
  4. Click Activate.

Configure metrics duplication options

  1. Sign into Grafana Cloud and click Observability > Configuration.
  2. Click Connect knowledge graph.
  3. Click Duplication Options.
  4. Select how you want the knowledge graph to manage span metrics.
  5. Click OK.

Troubleshoot missing or incomplete span and service graph metrics

Span metrics power the Service Overview dashboards, and service graph metrics power the service relationship and dependency maps. The Instrumentation Quality report flags a service when these metrics are missing or incomplete. Use the message shown in the report to identify which case applies:

  • No span or service graph metrics were found. Metrics generation is not producing data for this service. Enable it as described in Enable metrics generation, and confirm the service is sending traces. If you use Beyla, confirm it is configured to generate the metrics.
  • Metrics are present but the environment label is empty. The metrics exist but the deployment environment is not set, so the knowledge graph cannot map the service to an environment. Set the deployment.environment.name resource attribute in your instrumentation.
  • Metrics are present but the namespace label is empty. The metrics exist but the service namespace is not set. Set the service.namespace resource attribute, and, for Kubernetes workloads, the k8s.namespace.name attribute. See Add missing Kubernetes attributes.