The way Grafana queries Tempo changed from 7.4.x to 7.5.x. This document aims to explain the difference between the two and help you set up your datasources appropriately.

Grafana 7.5.x (easy mode)

Grafana 7.5.x is able to query Tempo directly. Point the Grafana datasource at your Tempo query frontend (or single binary) and enter the url: http://<tempo hostname>:<http port number>. For most of our examples the following works.

Note that the port of 3100 is a common port used in our examples. Tempo default for http is 80.

Grafana 7.4.x

Grafana 7.4.x is not able to query Tempo directly and requires the tempo-query component as an intermediary. In this case you need to run Tempo-Query and direct it at Tempo proper. Check out the Grafana 7.4.x example to help with configuration.

The url entered will be http://<tempo-query hostname>:16686/.