Plugins 〉Synthetic Monitoring

Application

grafana

Synthetic Monitoring

Overview
Installation
Change log
Related content

Synthetic monitoring application

Synthetic Monitoring is a blackbox monitoring solution provided as part of Grafana Cloud. Synthetic Monitoring provides users with insights into how their applications and services are behaving from an external point of view. Users can define checks to continually test remote targets from 1 or more probe locations around the world to assess the availability, performance and correctness of the services. As each check runs, metrics and logs are collected and published to the user's Grafana Cloud service. Metrics are published to Grafana Cloud Prometheus and logs are published to Grafana Cloud Loki.

Synthetic monitoring is the successor to the original worldping application. The refreshed Synthetic Monitoring product focuses on reducing complexity and taking advantage of Grafana Cloud capabilities.

Check Types

Users can define HTTP/HTTPS, DNS, TCP and ICMP Ping checks to monitor their remote targets. Internally, the Synthetic Monitoring solution uses the Prometheus Blackbox exporter for executing the checks and collecting metrics and logs. When creating a check, users are able to customize the settings and validation rules supported by the Blackbox exporter.

Probe Locations

For each check, users can select 1 or more 'public' probe locations distributed throughout the world to run tests from. Additionally, users can run their own 'private' probe locations by downloading and deploying the Synthetic Monitoring Agent.

Configuration

Synthetic Monitoring requires a Grafana Cloud account, and is installed by default in Grafana Cloud stacks. A local Grafana instance can be configured to connect to Synthetic Monitoring via a provisioning file:

apiVersion: 1
apps:

type: grafana-synthetic-monitoring-app
name: grafana-synthetic-monitoring-app
disabled: false
jsonData:
apiHost: <synthetic monitoring api url for your grafana cloud stack>
stackId: <instance ID of your hosted grafana>
logs:
grafanaName: <name of an existing Loki datasource pointing to the Grafana Cloud Loki instance>
hostedId: <Grafana Cloud Loki instance ID>
metrics:
grafanaName: <name of an existing Prometheus datasource pointing to the Grafana Cloud Prometheus instance>
hostedId: <Grafana Cloud Prometheus instance ID>
secureJsonData:
publisherToken: <metric publisher token from grafana.com>

Configuration details:

apiHost expects Synthetic Monitoring API URL, see more details here
stackId expects an integer and can be found using gcom /instances/<orgSlug>, or by visiting https://grafana.com/orgs/<orgSlug>/stacks and clicking the details button on stack you are connecting to. The id will be in the URL.
The logs and metrics section are instructing the plugin which datasources it needs to use.
- The grafanaName needs to exactly match the names specified in your datasource provisioning
- The hostedId expects an integer and is the same value as the basicAuthUser in your datasource provisioning. The value can also be found from the details page of loki or prometheus at https://grafana.com/orgs/<orgSlug>/stacks.
publisherToken needs to be a grafana.com api key with a MetricsPublisher role. This is what the probes use to publish metrics to your cloud stack.

Note: you can add a provisioning block per org to provision the plugin for multiple orgs. You can provide different values for each org block and connect to a different cloud stack per org.

Prerequisites:

A datasource pointed at a Prometheus instance hosted in Grafana Cloud
A datasource pointed at a Loki instance hosted in Grafana Cloud

Note: The Prometheus and Loki instances must be part of the same Cloud stack

The required datasources can be added via provisioning. The information needed can be copied from Prometheus and Loki datasources found in the datasources tab of a Cloud hosted Grafana instance:

apiVersion: 1
datasources:


name: <datasource name>
type: loki
access: proxy
url: https://logs-prod-us-central1.grafana.net
basicAuth: true
basicAuthUser: <Grafana Cloud Loki instance ID>
jsonData:
maxLines: 1000
secureJsonData:
basicAuthPassword: <viewer token from grafana.com>
version: 1


name: <datasource name>
type: prometheus
access: proxy
url: https://prometheus-us-central1.grafana.net/api/prom
basicAuth: true
basicAuthUser: <Grafana Cloud Prometheus instance ID>
jsonData:
timeInterval: 1s
secureJsonData:
basicAuthPassword: <viewer token from grafana.com>
version: 1

To start the using app:

Navigate to Synthetic Monitoring via the sidebar
Click the Get Started button. This will initialize the app.

During the Initialization process, the Synthetic Monitoring backend will:

Validate the Publisher API key provided in the provisioning file.
Ensure the account has active Grafana Cloud Prometheus and Grafana Cloud Loki services
The dashboards included with the App will then be imported.
Finally, the Synthentic Monitoring Backend will be notified that the service is ready.

Users can then create checks to monitor their remote targets. Metrics and logs will flow into the selected Cloud stack.

Installing Synthetic Monitoring on Grafana Cloud:

For more information, visit the docs on plugin installation.

Change Log

1.12.0 (2023-9-20)

Allow all users to view alerts, and editors to edit them
Fix spacing issues in the test check modal
Update template dashboard JSON that was causing Grafana to crash on copy
Update MultiHTTP URL validation
Remove some old feature flags
Remove the deprecated check list visualization view

1.11.7 (2023-9-1)

Add filtering and search to the check list visualization view
Add enable/disable to the MultiHTTP form
Fix query param fields in MultiHTTP
Remove worldmap panel dependency

1.11.6 (2023-8-23)

Add an explore button to visualization menus
Encode/decode MultiHTTP request bodies in base64

1.11.5 (2023-8-14)

Add alerting levels to MultiHTTP
Fix error rate maps no filtering by probes
Make the check editor back button less confusing
Remove deprecated ArrayVector
Fix some URL validation
Various layout issues

1.11.4 (2023-7-19)

Fix an unhandled error in the traceroute nodegraph panel
Various tweaks to the MultiHTTP scene and form

1.11.3 (2023-7-10)

Fix an incorrect frequency value in the HTTP scene
Add an "edit check" button to all scenes

1.11.2 (2023-26-1)

Fix broken dashboard link from summary page
Fix repeated "dashboard" on summary page

1.11.1 (2023-26-1)

Add a multihttp scene behind a feature flag

1.11.0 (2023-6-1)

Include some fixes for scenes
Fix some issues with identifying datasources when an instance is renamed
Replace the visualization list view with a scene
Remove legacy theming

1.10.1 (2023-4-26)

Suppress an erroneous error toast in the alerting view
Add some testing for Terraform generation output

1.10.0 (2023-4-21)

Add and release multi-http functionality behind feature flag
Add and release scenes based dashboards behind feature flag
Fix a bug with base64 encoding in TCP query/response
Update datasource query editor to include probes in traceroute queries

1.9.36 (2023-3-15)

Update build tooling from grafana-toolkit to create-plugin

1.9.35 (2023-2-16)

Fix a bug with rendering data in the node panel for traceroute checks

1.9.34 (2023-2-09)

Fix a bug with the config page not rendering in cloud instances

1.9.33 (2023-2-07)

Upgrade the Worldmap panel dependency

1.9.32 (2023-2-06)

Fix a bug with the config page not rendering in cloud instances

1.9.31 (2023-1-13)

Fix a bug where checks weren't refetched after bulk updating probes
Add some information on how to set up a private probe after creating a token
Show error state if validating the body of an HTTP HEAD request
Remove the legacy initialization flow

1.9.30 (2023-1-9)

Remove deprecated initialization flow

1.9.29 (2023-1-4)

Add proxy headers to HTTP checks

1.9.28 (2022-11-9)

Update Alert URL for compatiblity with Grafana 9

1.9.27 (2022-11-8)

Fix error message on non-traceroutes timeout field

1.9.26 (2022-11-2)

Fix a duplicate button on the setup page

1.9.25 (2022-10-24)

Support the new Grafana navigation setup

1.9.24 (2022-10-11)

Fix a bug with dashboard redirects that were causing them to lose query params

1.9.23 (2022-10-5)

Bump Grafana dependencies to version 9

1.9.22 (2022-9-15)

Update worldmap panel dependency

1.9.21 (2022-8-10)

Update link to alerting UI

1.9.20 (2022-8-2)

Make sure 100% is never rendered as 100.0%

1.9.19 (2022-6-21)

Fix a bug with some promql queries that could result in values over 100%

1.9.18 (2022-6-21)

Fix a bug with settting default alert rules in Grafana v9

1.9.17 (2022-6-9)

Handles a breaking change in the alerting api for Grafana v9

1.9.16 (2022-6-3)

Adds a more helpful error message when probe deletion fails

1.9.15 (2022-4-28)

Fixes a routing issue where the unprovisioned plugin could get stuck in an infinite loop
Fixes a routing issue where the plugin could prevent navigation to other parts of Grafana

1.9.14 (2022-4-15)

Fixes a bug where there alerting tab could end up in a disabled state when it shouldn't

1.9.13 (2022-3-29)

Bug fixes

Fixes reachability queries that could sometimes be over 100% for long time windows
Hides dashboard update modal from users that don't have permissions to update dashboards

1.9.12 (2022-3-16)

Bug fixes

Dashboard maps weren't displaying thresholds correctly
Show custom alert thresholds in the check editor form

1.9.11 (2022-3-3)

Bug fixes

Fix broken dashboard redirect logic

1.9.10 (2022-2-16)

Bug fixes

Use datasource UIDs when creating dashboards instead of names
Fix a potential infinite routing loop when initializing on prem

1.9.9 (2022-2-04)

Features

Rearranged checklist filters under a central dropdown

1.9.8 (2022-2-01)

1.9.7 (2022-1-25)

Features

Adds a map to the probe edit page to visualize longitude & latitude

1.9.6 (2022-1-21)

Features

Increase the maximum quantity of labels per check to 10.

1.9.5 (2022-1-21)

Bug fixes

Fix a race condition that prevented values from showing up when navigating to the edit check form

1.9.4 (2022-1-19)

Bug fixes

Update routing to use React router
Fix a bug in the usage prediction calculation
Accessibility fixes

Features

Include traceroute checks in the Terraform config export

1.9.3 (2022-1-10)

Bug fixes

Gracefully handle inability to connect to API

1.9.2 (2022-1-06)

Features

Added the ability to bulk edit probes for checks

1.8.1 (2022-1-04)

Bug Fixes

Update the README with additional configuration details

1.8.0 (2022-1-04)

Features

Add a terraform import command to the terraform config download. This allows users to generate intial TF state.

Bug Fixes

Replace worldmap panel plugin with geomap panel in all the dashboards
Use the updated timeseries panel in the summary dashboard
Rename the DNS dashboard to align with the other dashboards

1.7.0 (2021-12-01)

Features

Add the ability to export checks and probes as terraform config from the plugin config page
Add a button to generate a new API key in the plugin config page