This is documentation for the next version of Grafana Tempo documentation. For the latest stable release, go to the latest version.

Set up for tracing

Set up Tempo

Plan your deployment

Deployment modes

Open source

Deployment modes

Tempo supports two deployment modes: monolithic and microservices. All components are compiled into a single binary, and the -target flag determines which mode runs.

Monolithic mode

In monolithic mode, the required components run in a single process using -target=all, which is the default. No Kafka is required. The distributor pushes trace data in-process directly to the live-store and metrics-generator, and traces are flushed to the configured storage backend. Object storage is recommended for production deployments.

Use monolithic mode when:

You are getting started with Tempo or evaluating it
You need a development or testing environment
Your trace volume is under 25-35 MB/s or 55k-80k spans/s
Operational simplicity matters more than independent scaling

Monolithic mode has some trade-offs to be aware of. All components share the same resource pool, so a spike in query load can affect write throughput and vice versa. There is no independent scaling: you can scale vertically, but you cannot scale individual components separately. Running more than one -target=all instance isn’t supported because the backend scheduler is a singleton; use microservices mode for high availability. At higher volumes, memory pressure from collocated components can cause issues.

Microservices mode

In microservices mode, each component runs as a separate process with its own -target flag. For example, -target=distributor or -target=querier. This mode requires a Kafka-compatible system, such as Apache Kafka, Redpanda, or WarpStream, as the durable queue between the distributor and downstream consumers.

Use microservices mode when:

You are running a production deployment
You have high trace volumes that require independent scaling
You need high availability and isolated failure domains
You want to scale write throughput, query performance, and recent-data capacity independently

Microservices mode provides independent scaling for each component and isolated failure domains. A querier crash doesn’t affect ingestion, and a block-builder restart doesn’t affect query availability. Live-stores can be deployed across availability zones for high availability.

Choosing a mode

Consideration	Monolithic	Microservices
Kafka required	No	Yes
Scaling	Single process; scale vertically	Each component scales independently
Failure isolation	All components share resources	Isolated failure domains per component
Operational complexity	Low	Higher, with more processes to manage
Best for	Getting started, development, up to 25-35 MB/s	Production, high volume, high availability

Next steps

For detailed architecture, component descriptions, scaling guidelines, and migration guidance, refer to the Deployment modes reference.
To size your cluster, refer to Size the cluster.
To deploy Tempo, refer to Deploy your Tempo instance.