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Get started with Grafana Tempo using the Helm chart

The Grafana Tempo Helm chart allows you to configure, install, and upgrade Grafana Tempo within a Kubernetes cluster. Using this procedure, you will:

  • Create a custom namespace within your Kubernetes cluster
  • Install Helm and the grafana helm-charts repository
  • Configure a storage option for traces
  • Install Tempo using Helm

To learn more about Helm, read the Helm documentation.

If you are using Helm to install Grafana Enterprise Traces (GET), then you will also need to ensure that you:

  • Install the GET license
  • Create an additional storage bucket for the admin resources
  • Disable the gateway
  • Enable the enterpriseGateway

Before you begin

These instructions are common across any flavor of Kubernetes. They also assume that you know how to install, configure, and operate a Kubernetes cluster. It also assumes that you have an understanding of what the kubectl command does.

CAUTION: This procedure is primarily aimed at local or development setups.

Hardware requirements

  • A single Kubernetes node with a minimum of 4 cores and 16 GB RAM

Software requirements

Verify that you have:

  • Access to the Kubernetes cluster
  • Persistent storage is enabled in the Kubernetes cluster, which has a default storage class setup.
  • Access to a local storage option (like MinIO) or a storage bucket like Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, or Google Cloud Platform (see Optional: Other storage options section for more information)
  • DNS service works in the Kubernetes cluster (refer to the Debugging DNS resolution in the Kubernetes documentation)
  • Optional: An ingress controller is set up in the Kubernetes cluster, for example ingress-nginx

NOTE: If you want to access Tempo from outside of the Kubernetes cluster, you may need an ingress. Ingress-related procedures are marked as optional.

Create a custom namespace and add the Helm repository

Using a custom namespace solves problems later on because you do not have to overwrite the default namespace.

  1. Create a unique Kubernetes namespace, for example tempo-test:

    bash 
    kubectl create namespace tempo-test

For more details, see the Kubernetes documentation about Creating a new namespace.

  1. Set up a Helm repository using the following commands:

    bash 
    helm repo add grafana https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update
    Note: The Helm chart at https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts is a publication of the source code at grafana/tempo.

Set Helm chart values

The Helm Chart for Tempo includes a file called “values.yaml”, containing default configuration options. In our case, you will create a local file called “custom.yaml” in a working directory - this is detailed in the set of steps below.

After creating the file, you will have the option to make changes in that file as needed for your deployment environment.

When you use Helm to deploy the chart, you will specify that Helm will use your custom.yaml instead of values.yaml. The custom.yaml file sets the storage and traces options, enables the gateway, and sets the cluster to main. The traces configure the distributor’s receiver protocols.

To customize your Helm chart values:

  1. Create a custom.yaml file in your working directory.
  2. From the examples below, copy and paste either the Tempo Helm chart values or the Grafana Enterprise Traces Helm chart values into your file.
  3. Save your custom.yaml file.
  4. For simple deployments, leave the storage and minio sections as they are; MinIO will be deployed for you by the Helm chart and Tempo will use it to store traces (and other information if you are running GET). Further down this page, you will find instructions for customizing your trace storage configuration options, if the provided defaults are not what you are looking to test.
  5. Set your traces values to configure the receivers on the Tempo distributor. (More detail on this is further down on this page.)
  6. Save the changes to your file.

Tempo Helm chart values

This sample file contains example values for installing Tempo using Helm.

yaml 
---
storage:
  trace:
    backend: s3
    s3:
      access_key: 'grafana-tempo'
      secret_key: 'supersecret'
      bucket: 'tempo-traces'
      endpoint: 'tempo-minio:9000'
      insecure: true
#MinIO storage configuration
minio:
  enabled: true
  mode: standalone
  rootUser: grafana-tempo
  rootPassword: supersecret
  buckets:
    # Default Tempo storage bucket
    - name: tempo-traces
      policy: none
      purge: false
traces:
  otlp:
    grpc:
      enabled: true
    http:
      enabled: true
  zipkin:
    enabled: false
  jaeger:
    thriftHttp:
      enabled: false
  opencensus:
    enabled: false

Grafana Enterprise Traces helm chart values

The values in the example below provide configuration values for GET. These values include an additional admin bucket, the gateway has been disabled, the enterpriseGateway has been enabled, and a license has been specified.

yaml 
---
global:
  clusterDomain: 'cluster.local'

multitenancyEnabled: true
enterprise:
  enabled: true
  image:
    tag: v2.1.0
enterpriseGateway:
  enabled: true
gateway:
  enabled: false
# MinIO storage configuration
minio:
  enabled: true
  mode: standalone
  rootUser: grafana-tempo
  rootPassword: supersecret
  buckets:
    # Bucket for traces storage if enterprise.enabled is true - requires license.
    - name: enterprise-traces
      policy: none
      purge: false
    # Admin client bucket if enterprise.enabled is true - requires license.
    - name: enterprise-traces-admin
      policy: none
      purge: false
  # Changed the mc config path to '/tmp' from '/etc' as '/etc' is only writable by root and OpenShift will not permit this.
  configPathmc: '/tmp/minio/mc/'
storage:
  trace:
    backend: s3
    s3:
      access_key: 'grafana-tempo'
      secret_key: 'supersecret'
      bucket: 'enterprise-traces'
      endpoint: 'tempo-minio:9000'
      insecure: true
  admin:
    backend: s3
    s3:
      access_key_id: 'grafana-tempo'
      secret_access_key: 'supersecret'
      bucket_name: 'enterprise-traces-admin'
      endpoint: 'tempo-minio:9000'
      insecure: true
traces:
  otlp:
    http:
      enabled: true
    grpc:
      enabled: true
distributor:
  config:
    log_received_spans:
      enabled: true

license:
  contents: |
    LICENSEGOESHERE

Enterprise license configuration

If you are using GET, you need to configure a license, by adding the license to the custom.yaml file or by using a secret that contains the license. Only one of these options should be used.

Note: The Set up GET instructions explain how to obtain a license.

Using the first option, you can specify the license text in the custom.yaml values file created above, in the license: section.

yaml 
license:
  contents: |
    LICENSEGOESHERE

If you do not with to specific the license in the custom.yaml file, you can use a secret that contains the license content that is referenced.

  1. Create the secret.

    bash 
    kubectl -n tempo-test create secret generic tempo-license --from-file=license.jwt

  2. Configure the custom.yaml that you created above to reference the secret.

    yaml 
    license:
  external: true

Set your storage option

Before you run the Helm chart, you need to configure where trace data will be stored.

The storage block defined in the values.yaml file is used to configure the storage that Tempo uses for trace storage.

The procedure below configures MinIO as the local storage option managed by the Helm chart. However, you can use a other storage provides. Refer to the Optional storage section below.

Note: The MinIO installation that is included with this Helm chart is for demonstration purposes only, and is configured for a maximum storage size of 5GiB. This MinIO installation is not suitable for production environments and should only be used for example purposes. Performant, Enterprise-grade object storage should always be used in production

The Helm chart values provided include the basic MinIO set up values. If you need to customize them, the steps below walk you through which sections to update. If you do not need to change the values, you can skip this section.

  1. Optional: Update the configuration options in custom.yaml for your configuration.

    yaml 
    ---
storage:
  trace:
    backend: s3
    s3:
      access_key: 'grafana-tempo'
      secret_key: 'supersecret'
      bucket: 'tempo-traces'
      endpoint: 'tempo-minio:9000'
      insecure: true

    Enterprise users may also need to specify an additional bucket for admin resources.

    yaml 
    storage:
  admin:
    backend: s3
    s3:
      access_key_id: 'grafana-tempo'
      secret_access_key: 'supersecret'
      bucket_name: 'enterprise-traces-admin'
      endpoint: 'tempo-minio:9000'
      insecure: true

  2. Optional: Locate the MinIO section and change the the username and password to something you wish to use.

    yaml 
    minio:
  enabled: true
  mode: standalone
  rootUser: minio
  rootPassword: minio123

Optional: Other storage options

Persistent storage is enabled in the Kubernetes cluster, which has a default storage class setup. You can change the default StorageClass using Kubernetes documentation.

This Helm chart guide defaults to using MinIO as a simple solution to get you started. However, you can use a storage bucket like Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, or Google Cloud Platform.

Each storage provider has a different configuration stanza, which are detailed in Tempo’s documentation. You will need to update your configuration based upon you storage provider. Refer to the storage configuration block for information on storage options.

To use other storage options, set minio.enabled: false in the values.yaml file:

yaml 
---
minio:
  enabled: false # Disables the MinIO chart

Update the storage configuration options based upon your requirements:

Set traces receivers

The Helm chart values in your custom.yaml file are configure to use OTLP. If you are using other receivers, then you need to configure them.

Tempo can be configured to receive data from OTLP, Jaegar, Zipkin, Kafka, and OpenCensus. The following example enables OTLP on the distributor. For other options, refer to the distributor documentation

The example used in this procedure has OTLP enabled.

Enable any other protocols based on your requirements.

yaml 
traces:
  otlp:
    grpc:
      enabled: true
    http:
      enabled: true
  zipkin:
    enabled: false
  jaeger:
    thriftHttp:
      enabled: false
  opencensus:
    enabled: false

Optional: Add custom configurations

There are many configuration options available in the tempo-distribute Helm chart. This procedure only covers the bare minimumn required to launch GET or Tempo in a basic deployment.

You can add values to your custom.yaml file to set custom configuration options that override the defaults present in the Helm chart. The tempo-distributed Helm chart’s README contains a list of available options. The values.yaml files provides the defaults for the helm chart.

To see all of the configurable parameters for the tempo-distributed Helm chart, use the following command:

bash 
helm show values grafana/tempo-distributed

The configuration sections are added to the custom.yaml file. This file is included when you install or upgrade the Helm chart.

Optional: Configure an ingress

An ingress lets you externally access a Kubernetes cluster. Replace <ingress-host> with a suitable hostname that DNS can resolve to the external IP address of the Kubernetes cluster. For more information, see Ingress.

Note: On Linux systems, and if it is not possible for you set up local DNS resolution, you can use the --add-host=<ingress-host>:<kubernetes-cluster-external-address> command-line flag to define the <ingress-host> local address for the docker commands in the examples that follow.
  1. Open your custom.yaml or create a YAML file of Helm values called custom.yaml.
  2. Add the following configuration to the file:
    yaml 
    nginx:
  ingress:
    enabled: true
    ingressClassName: nginx
    hosts:
      - host: <ingress-host>
        paths:
          - path: /
            pathType: Prefix
    tls: {} # empty, disabled.
  3. Save the changes.

Install Grafana Tempo using the Helm chart

Use the following command to install Tempo using the configuration options you’ve specified in the custom.yaml file:

bash 
helm -n tempo-test install tempo grafana/tempo-distributed -f custom.yaml

NOTE: The output of the command contains the write and read URLs necessary for the following steps.

If the installation is successful, the output will be similar to this:

yaml 
>  helm -n tempo-test install tempo grafana/tempo-distributed -f custom.yaml

W0210 15:02:09.901064    8613 warnings.go:70] spec.template.spec.topologySpreadConstraints[0].topologyKey: failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/zone is deprecated since v1.17; use "topology.kubernetes.io/zone" instead
W0210 15:02:09.904082    8613 warnings.go:70] spec.template.spec.topologySpreadConstraints[0].topologyKey: failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/zone is deprecated since v1.17; use "topology.kubernetes.io/zone" instead
W0210 15:02:09.906932    8613 warnings.go:70] spec.template.spec.topologySpreadConstraints[0].topologyKey: failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/zone is deprecated since v1.17; use "topology.kubernetes.io/zone" instead
W0210 15:02:09.929946    8613 warnings.go:70] spec.template.spec.topologySpreadConstraints[0].topologyKey: failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/zone is deprecated since v1.17; use "topology.kubernetes.io/zone" instead
W0210 15:02:09.930379    8613 warnings.go:70] spec.template.spec.topologySpreadConstraints[0].topologyKey: failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/zone is deprecated since v1.17; use "topology.kubernetes.io/zone" instead
NAME: tempo
LAST DEPLOYED: Fri Feb 10 15:02:08 2023
NAMESPACE: tempo-test
STATUS: deployed
REVISION: 1
TEST SUITE: None
NOTES:
***********************************************************************
 Welcome to Grafana Tempo
 Chart version: 1.0.1
 Tempo version: 2.2.0
***********************************************************************

Installed components:
* ingester
* distributor
* querier
* query-frontend
* compactor
* memcached

NOTE: If you update your values.yaml or custom.yaml, run the same helm install command and replace install with upgrade.

Check the statuses of the Tempo pods:

bash 
kubectl -n tempo-test get pods

The results look similar to this:

NAME                                    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
tempo-compactor-86cd974cf-8qrk2         1/1     Running   0          22h
tempo-distributor-bbf4889db-v8l8r       1/1     Running   0          22h
tempo-ingester-0                        1/1     Running   0          22h
tempo-ingester-1                        1/1     Running   0          22h
tempo-ingester-2                        1/1     Running   0          22h
tempo-memcached-0                       1/1     Running   0          8d
tempo-minio-6c4b66cb77-sgm8z            1/1     Running   0          26h
tempo-querier-777c8dcf54-fqz45          1/1     Running   0          22h
tempo-query-frontend-7f7f686d55-xsnq5   1/1     Running   0          22h

Wait until all of the pods have a status of Running or Completed, which might take a few minutes.

For Enterprise users, the output results look similar to this:

bash 
❯ k get pods
NAME                                        READY   STATUS      RESTARTS      AGE
tempo-admin-api-7c59c75f6c-wvj75            1/1     Running     0             86m
tempo-compactor-75777b5d8c-5f44z            1/1     Running     0             86m
tempo-distributor-94fd965f4-prkz6           1/1     Running     0             86m
tempo-enterprise-gateway-6d7f78cf97-dhz9b   1/1     Running     0             86m
tempo-ingester-0                            1/1     Running     0             86m
tempo-ingester-1                            1/1     Running     1 (86m ago)   86m
tempo-ingester-2                            1/1     Running     1 (86m ago)   86m
tempo-memcached-0                           1/1     Running     0             86m
tempo-minio-6c4b66cb77-wjfpf                1/1     Running     0             86m
tempo-querier-6cb474546-cwlkz               1/1     Running     0             86m
tempo-query-frontend-6d6566cbf7-pcwg6       1/1     Running     0             86m
tempo-tokengen-job-58jhs                    0/1     Completed   0             86m

Note that the tempo-tokengen-job has emitted a log message containing the initial admin token.

Retrieve the token with this command:

kubectl get pods | awk '/.*-tokengen-job-.*/ {print $1}' | xargs -I {} kubectl logs {} | awk '/Token:\s+/ {print $2}'

To get the logs for the tokengen pod, you can use:

kubectl logs tempo-tokengen-job-58jhs

Next step

The next step is to test your Tempo installation by sending trace data to Grafana. You can use the Set up a test application for a Tempo cluster document for step-by-step instructions.

If you already have Grafana available, you can add a Tempo data source using the URL fitting to your environment. For example: http://tempo-query-frontend.trace-test.svc.cluster.local:3100

Enterprise users may wish to install the Enterprise Traces plugin in their Grafana Enterprise instance to allow configuration of tenants, tokens, and access policies. Once a user, and access policy have been created using the plugin, a datasource can be configured to point at http://tempo-enterprise-gateway.tempo-test.svc.cluster.local:3100.

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