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Application Observability with Grafana Alloy

Grafana Alloy is a vendor-neutral distribution of the OpenTelemetry (OTel) Collector and the recommended way to send OpenTelemetry data to Grafana Cloud. Grafana Alloy acts as an outbound gateway providing reliability and scalability.

Before you begin

To set up Grafana Alloy as a data collector and send data to Grafana Cloud:

Grafana requires you to run Alloy on every host for Application Observability to function optimally. This also allows Grafana to seamlessly correlate data between Application and Infrastructure observability.

If you’ve already set up a Collector, configure your application to use it.

Configure Alloy

You need an alloy-config.river configuration file to run Grafana Alloy in flow mode and it’s recommended to use the OpenTelemetry (OTLP) integration to generate a configuration file.

Navigate to the OpenTelemetry Application page and click the Add service button. Choose the OpenTelemetry (OTLP) integration from the list.

OpenTelemetry Integration

The OpenTelemetry (OTLP) integration will generate a Grafana Alloy configuration to use with Grafana Application Observability:

river 
otelcol.receiver.otlp "default" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.receiver.otlp/

	// configures the default grpc endpoint "0.0.0.0:4317"
	grpc { }
	// configures the default http/protobuf endpoint "0.0.0.0:4318"
	http { }

	output {
		metrics = [otelcol.processor.resourcedetection.default.input]
		logs    = [otelcol.processor.resourcedetection.default.input]
		traces  = [otelcol.processor.resourcedetection.default.input]
	}
}

otelcol.processor.resourcedetection "default" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.processor.resourcedetection/
	detectors = ["env", "system"] // add "gcp", "ec2", "ecs", "elastic_beanstalk", "eks", "lambda", "azure", "aks", "consul", "heroku"  if you want to use cloud resource detection

	system {
		hostname_sources = ["os"]
	}

	output {
		metrics = [otelcol.processor.transform.drop_unneeded_resource_attributes.input]
		logs    = [otelcol.processor.transform.drop_unneeded_resource_attributes.input]
		traces  = [otelcol.processor.transform.drop_unneeded_resource_attributes.input]
	}
}

otelcol.processor.transform "drop_unneeded_resource_attributes" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.processor.transform/
	error_mode = "ignore"

	trace_statements {
		context    = "resource"
		statements = [
			"delete_key(attributes, \"k8s.pod.start_time\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"os.description\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"os.type\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.command_args\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.executable.path\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.pid\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.description\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.name\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.version\")",
		]
	}

	metric_statements {
		context    = "resource"
		statements = [
			"delete_key(attributes, \"k8s.pod.start_time\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"os.description\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"os.type\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.command_args\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.executable.path\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.pid\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.description\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.name\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.version\")",
		]
	}

	log_statements {
		context    = "resource"
		statements = [
			"delete_key(attributes, \"k8s.pod.start_time\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"os.description\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"os.type\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.command_args\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.executable.path\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.pid\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.description\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.name\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.version\")",
		]
	}

	output {
		metrics = [otelcol.processor.transform.add_resource_attributes_as_metric_attributes.input]
		logs    = [otelcol.processor.batch.default.input]
		traces  = [
			otelcol.processor.batch.default.input,
			otelcol.connector.host_info.default.input,
		]
	}
}

otelcol.connector.host_info "default" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.connector.host_info/
	host_identifiers = ["host.name"]

	output {
		metrics = [otelcol.processor.batch.default.input]
	}
}

otelcol.processor.transform "add_resource_attributes_as_metric_attributes" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.processor.transform/
	error_mode = "ignore"

	metric_statements {
		context    = "datapoint"
		statements = [
			"set(attributes[\"deployment.environment\"], resource.attributes[\"deployment.environment\"])",
			"set(attributes[\"service.version\"], resource.attributes[\"service.version\"])",
		]
	}

	output {
		metrics = [otelcol.processor.batch.default.input]
	}
}

otelcol.processor.batch "default" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.processor.batch/
	output {
		metrics = [otelcol.exporter.otlphttp.grafana_cloud.input]
		logs    = [otelcol.exporter.otlphttp.grafana_cloud.input]
		traces  = [otelcol.exporter.otlphttp.grafana_cloud.input]
	}
}

otelcol.exporter.otlphttp "grafana_cloud" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.exporter.otlphttp/
	client {
		endpoint = env("GRAFANA_CLOUD_OTLP_ENDPOINT")
		auth     = otelcol.auth.basic.grafana_cloud.handler
	}
}

otelcol.auth.basic "grafana_cloud" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.auth.basic/
	username = env("GRAFANA_CLOUD_INSTANCE_ID")
	password = env("GRAFANA_CLOUD_API_KEY")
}

The configuration file requires several environmental variable to be set:

Environment VariableDescriptionExample
GRAFANA_CLOUD_API_KEYAPI key generated aboveeyJvSomeLongStringJ9fQ==
GRAFANA_CLOUD_OTLP_ENDPOINTOTLP endpoint from Grafana Cloud > OpenTelemetry > Configurehttps://otlp-endpoint-***.grafana.net/otlp
GRAFANA_CLOUD_INSTANCE_IDInstance ID from Grafana Cloud > OpenTelemetry > Configure11111

Run Grafana Alloy

Create the alloy-config.river file, set the necessary environment variables, and start Grafana Alloy.

Configure your application

Set the following environment variables to configure the Collector for your application:

ConfigurationOptionsResult
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=<host>http://localhost:4318, remote host addressThe default local host address, or a remote host address.
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=<protocol>grpc, http/protobufThe default http/protobuf protocol or grpc

For example, for a local Grafana Alloy set the following environment variables:

shell 
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4317
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=grpc

Then restart your application.

Next steps

  1. Observe your services in Application Observability