Configure Trace to profiles

Using Trace to profiles, you can use the ability to correlate different signals in Grafana by adding the functionality to link between traces and profiles.

Trace to profiles lets you link your Grafana Pyroscope data source to tracing data. When configured, this connection lets you run queries from a trace span into the profile data using Explore. Each span links to your queries. Clicking a link runs the query in a split panel. If tags are configured, Grafana dynamically inserts the span attribute values into the query. The query runs over the time range of the (span start time - 60) to (span end time + 60 seconds).

Embedded flame graphs are also inserted into each span details section that has a linked profile. This lets you see resource consumption in a flame graph visualization for each span without having to navigate away from the current view.

There are two ways to configure the trace to profiles feature:

• Use a basic configuration with default query, or
• Configure a custom query where you can use a template language to interpolate variables from the trace or span.

Before you begin

To use Trace to profiles, you need:

• A Grafana Pyroscope data source connected to your Pyroscope instance.
• A Tempo data source configured with the Trace to profiles settings described on this page.
• Your application instrumented with all three of the following:
  1. Profiling: A Pyroscope SDK or Grafana Alloy sending profiling data to Pyroscope. Refer to Configure the client to send profiles for setup instructions.
  2. Tracing: An OpenTelemetry SDK sending trace data to Tempo. Refer to the OpenTelemetry getting started documentation for setup instructions.
  3. Span profiling bridge: A language-specific OpenTelemetry integration package that links profiling data with trace spans. Without this package, traces and profiles are independent signals with no connection between them. Refer to Link tracing and profiling with span profiles for per-language setup instructions.

Use a basic configuration

To use a basic configuration, follow these steps:

1. In the left menu, select Connections > Data sources.

2. Select your configured Tempo data source from the Data source list.

3. Scroll down to the Traces to profiles section.

4. Select a Pyroscope data source in the Data source drop-down.

5. Optional: Add one or more tags to use in the query. If left blank, the default values of service.name and service.namespace are used.

   The tags you configure must be present in the spans attributes or resources for a trace-to-profiles span link to appear.

   You can optionally configure a new name for the tag. This is useful if the tag has dots in the name and the target data source doesn’t allow dots in labels. In that case, you can remap service.name to service_name.

6. Select one or more profile types to use in the query. Select the drop-down and choose options from the menu.

   The profile type or app must be selected for the query to be valid. Grafana doesn’t show any data if the profile type or app isn’t selected when a query runs.

7. Select Save and Test.

If you have configured a Pyroscope data source and no profile data is available or the Profiles for this span button and the embedded flame graph isn’t visible, verify that the pyroscope.profile.id key-value pair exists in your span tags.

Configure a custom query

To use a custom query with the configuration, follow these steps:

1. In the left menu, select Connections > Data sources.

2. Select a configured Tempo data source from the Data source list.

3. Scroll down to the Traces to profiles section.

4. Select a Pyroscope data source in the Data source drop-down.

5. Optional: Choose any tags to use in the query. If left blank, the default values of service.name and service.namespace are used.

   These tags can be used in the custom query with ${__tags} variable. This variable interpolates the mapped tags as list in an appropriate syntax for the data source. Only tags present in the span are included. Tags that aren’t present are omitted.

   You can also configure a name for the tag. Tag names are useful where the tag has dots in the name and the target data source doesn’t allow using dots in labels. For example, you can remap service.name to service_name. If you don’t map any tags here, you can still use any tag in the query, for example: method="${__span.tags.method}". Learn more about custom query variables.

6. Select one or more profile types to use in the query. Select the drop-down and choose options from the menu.

7. Switch on Use custom query to enter a custom query.

8. Specify a custom query to be used to query profile data. You can use various variables to make that query relevant for current span. The link shows only if all the variables are interpolated with non-empty values to prevent creating an invalid query. You can interpolate the configured tags using the $__tags keyword.

9. Select Save and Test.

Configuration options

The following table describes options for configuring your Trace to profiles settings: