Slide 4 of 8

Attributes

What are attributes?

An attribute is a key-value pair that describes a collector, like a label or tag that helps Fleet Management understand what each collector is and how to configure it.

Attributes describe and organize your collectors

Why use attributes

You need attributes to target collectors with configuration pipelines. The better you categorize your fleet with attributes, the more powerful remote configuration becomes:

  • Configure at scale by targeting multiple collectors with one pipeline
  • Organize and configure your infrastructure by env, region, team, etc.

Three types of attributes

TypeDescriptionSet by
ReservedPreset attributes collector.os, collector.version, collector.IDFleet Management (auto)
LocalSet in the remotecfg block in local config fileYou
RemoteSet in the Fleet Management application in Grafana CloudYou

Attributes are the language of targeting. They turn “update this one collector’s configuration” into “update all production collectors in us-east.”

Script

Let’s talk about attributes, one of the most important concepts in Fleet Management.

An attribute is a key-value pair that describes a collector. For example, env equals production, or region equals us-east. Think of attributes like labels or tags—they’re metadata that helps Fleet Management understand what each collector is and how it should be configured.

Here’s why attributes matter. When you have 50 collectors, you don’t want to manage them one by one. You want to say “apply this configuration to all production collectors” or “update all collectors in the us-east region.” Attributes make that possible. They’re the language you use to group and target collectors.

What if you don’t create your own attributes? Technically, you can register a collector without any custom attributes. But then you lose the ability to add additional meaningful categories. You’d have to assign configurations based on reserved attributes only, which doesn’t take advantage of all Fleet Management can do. Attributes are what make “fleet” management easier.

There are three types. Reserved attributes are set automatically by Fleet Management, like the operating system and collector version. Local attributes are the ones you create in the remotecfg block in the collector’s local configuration. You create remote attributes in the Fleet Management interface in Grafana Cloud. Both local and remote attributes are custom labels you define, such as environment, region, team, or whatever makes sense for your organization.

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