---
title: "Set up Tempo | Grafana Tempo documentation"
description: "Learn how to set up a Tempo server or cluster and visualize data."
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

# Set up Tempo

To set up Tempo, you need to:

1. Plan your deployment
2. Deploy Tempo
3. Test your installation
4. (Optional) Configure Tempo services

## Plan your deployment

How you choose to deploy Tempo depends upon your tracing needs. Tempo has two deployment modes: monolithic or microservices.

Refer to [Plan your deployment](/docs/tempo/next/set-up-for-tracing/setup-tempo/plan/) to determine the best method to deploy Tempo.

> Note
> 
> Tempo v3.0 microservices mode requires a Kafka-compatible system (such as Apache Kafka, Redpanda, or WarpStream). Monolithic mode (`target: all`) does not require Kafka. For more information, refer to the [Deployment modes](/docs/tempo/next/reference-tempo-architecture/deployment-modes/) documentation.

## Deploy Tempo

After you have decided the best method, you can deploy and set up Tempo.

Grafana Tempo is available as a [pre-compiled binary, OS-specific packaging](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/releases), and [Docker image](https://github.com/grafana/tempo/tree/main/example/docker-compose).

Refer to [Deploy Tempo](/docs/tempo/next/set-up-for-tracing/setup-tempo/deploy/) for instructions for deploying using Kubernetes and deploying locally.

## Test your installation

After Tempo is deployed, you can validate Tempo by visualizing traces data:

- Using a [test application for a Tempo cluster](/docs/tempo/next/set-up-for-tracing/setup-tempo/test/set-up-test-app/) for the Kubernetes with Tanka setup

These visualizations test Kubernetes with Tanka and Linux procedures. They don’t check optional configuration you have enabled.

## (Optional) Configure Tempo services

Explore features by learning about [available features and configurations](/docs/tempo/next/configuration/).

If you would like to see a simplified, annotated example configuration for Tempo, the [Introduction to MLTP](https://github.com/grafana/intro-to-mltp) example repository contains a [configuration](https://github.com/grafana/intro-to-mltp/blob/main/tempo/tempo.yaml) for a monolithic instance.