Menu

Important: This documentation is about an older version. It's relevant only to the release noted, many of the features and functions have been updated or replaced. Please view the current version.

Documentationbreadcrumb arrow Grafana Pyroscopebreadcrumb arrow Configure the client to send profilesbreadcrumb arrow Grafana Alloybreadcrumb arrow Receive SDK profiles
Open source

Receive profiles from Pyroscope SDKs

The pyroscope.receive_http component in Alloy receives profiles from applications instrumented with Pyroscope SDKs. This approach provides several benefits:

  • Lower latency by sending profiles to a local Alloy instance instead of over internet
  • Separation of infrastructure concerns (auth, routing) from application code
  • Centralized management of authentication and metadata enrichment

For more information about this component, refer to the pyroscope.receive_http component documentation.

Note

The pyroscope.receive_http component is currently in public preview. To use this component, set the --stability.level flag to public-preview. For more information about Alloy’s run usage, refer to the run command documentation documentation.

To set up profile receiving, you need to:

  1. Configure Alloy components
  2. Configure your application’s SDK
  3. Start Alloy

Configure Alloy components

The configuration requires at least two components:

Here’s a basic configuration that sets up a simple profile collection pipeline. It creates a receiver to collect profiles from your applications and forwards them through a writer component to send them to the Pyroscope backend:

alloy 
// Receives profiles over HTTP
pyroscope.receive_http "default" {
   http {
       listen_address = "0.0.0.0"
       listen_port = 9999
   }
   forward_to = [pyroscope.write.backend.receiver]
}

// Forwards profiles to Pyroscope
pyroscope.write "backend" {
   endpoint {
       url = "http://pyroscope:4040"
   }
}

Configure application SDK

Update your application’s SDK configuration to point to Alloy’s receive endpoint instead of Pyroscope directly. For example, in Go:

Go 
config := pyroscope.Config{
    ApplicationName: "my.service.cpu",
    ServerAddress:   "http://localhost:9999", // Alloy's receive endpoint
}

Check your specific language SDK documentation for the exact configuration options.

Examples

The examples in this section provide samples you can use as a starting point for your own configurations.

Basic receiving setup

This example shows a basic setup receiving profiles on port 9090 and forwarding them to a local Pyroscope instance:

alloy 
pyroscope.receive_http "default" {
    http {
        listen_address = "0.0.0.0"
        listen_port = 9090
    }
    forward_to = [pyroscope.write.backend.receiver]
}

pyroscope.write "production" {
    endpoint {
        url = "http://localhost:4040"
    }
}

Authentication

To send profiles to an authenticated Pyroscope endpoint:

alloy 
pyroscope.write "production" {
    endpoint {
        url = "http://pyroscope:4040"
        basic_auth {
            username = env("PYROSCOPE_USERNAME")
            password = env("PYROSCOPE_PASSWORD")
        }
    }
}

Adding external labels

External labels are added to all profiles forwarded through the write component. This is useful for adding infrastructure metadata:

alloy 
pyroscope.receive_http "default" {
    http {
        listen_address = "0.0.0.0"
        listen_port = 9999
    }
    forward_to = [pyroscope.write.backend.receiver]
}

pyroscope.write "backend" {
    endpoint {
        url = "http://pyroscope:4040"
    }
    external_labels = {
        "env"      = "production",
        "region"   = "us-west-1",
        "instance" = env("HOSTNAME"),
        "cluster"  = "main",
    }
}

Multiple destinations

Forward received profiles to multiple destinations - useful for testing or migration scenarios:

alloy 
pyroscope.receive_http "default" {
    http {
        listen_address = "0.0.0.0"
        listen_port = 9999
    }
    forward_to = [pyroscope.write.staging.receiver, pyroscope.write.production.receiver]
}

// Send profiles to staging
pyroscope.write "staging" {
    endpoint {
        url = "http://pyroscope-staging:4040"
    }
    external_labels = {
        "env" = "staging",
    }
}

// Send profiles to production
pyroscope.write "production" {
    endpoint {
        url = "http://pyroscope-production:4041"
    }
    external_labels = {
        "env" = "production",
    }
}

Note

This configuration will duplicate the received profiles and send a copy to each configured pyroscope.write component.

Another approach is to configure multiple receivers with multiple destinations:

alloy 
pyroscope.receive_http "staging" {
    http {
        listen_address = "0.0.0.0"
        listen_port = 9998
    }
    forward_to = [pyroscope.write.staging.receiver]
}

pyroscope.receive_http "production" {
    http {
        listen_address = "0.0.0.0"
        listen_port = 9999
    }
    forward_to = [pyroscope.write.production.receiver]
}

// Send profiles to staging
pyroscope.write "staging" {
    endpoint {
        url = "http://pyroscope-staging:4040"
    }
    external_labels = {
        "env" = "staging",
    }
}

// Send profiles to production
pyroscope.write "production" {
    endpoint {
        url = "http://pyroscope-production:4041"
    }
    external_labels = {
        "env" = "production",
    }
}

For more information about component configuration options, refer to: