Slide 3 of 14

Working with pipelines

Creating pipelines

There are two ways to create a pipeline. Start from a Grafana Cloud integration to get going quickly, or write your own configuration from scratch when you have specific requirements.

ApproachBest for
Grafana Cloud integrationCommon use cases (Linux, MySQL, PostgreSQL)
Custom configurationSpecific requirements, custom scrapes

Pipeline operations

Once a pipeline exists, several operations are available. Deactivate a pipeline to temporarily stop collecting certain metrics, edit its content at any time, or view its history, which is invaluable for troubleshooting.

ActionWhat it does
Activate/DeactivateToggle collection on/off instantly
EditUpdate configuration content
View historySee what changed and when

Why this matters

Create a pipeline once, match it to collectors with attributes, and Fleet Management distributes it. One pipeline can serve hundreds of collectors.

  • Instant changes: Changes apply with no deployments or restarts.
  • Safe experimentation: Toggle off if something goes wrong.
  • Audit trail: History shows what changed and when.

Script

Now that you understand what pipelines are, let’s look at how you work with them in practice.

There are two ways to create pipelines. Grafana Cloud integrations are prebuilt configurations for common use cases: Linux metrics, MySQL monitoring, PostgreSQL, and more. These are great for getting started quickly. Custom configuration is where you write your own config from scratch, useful for specific requirements or custom scrape targets.

Once a pipeline exists, you have several operations available. You can activate or deactivate pipelines with a single click. Need to temporarily stop collecting certain metrics? Just toggle it off. You can edit the configuration content anytime. And you can view the pipeline history to see what changed and when, which is invaluable for troubleshooting.

The key insight here is that pipelines are reusable. You create a pipeline once, define which collectors should receive it with attribute matching, and Fleet Management handles the distribution. One pipeline can serve hundreds of collectors.

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