Application Observability now includes the knowledge graph by default
Application Observability now includes the knowledge graph by default
New Grafana Cloud organizations get Grafana Application Observability powered by the Grafana Cloud Knowledge Graph automatically. Host, Kubernetes, and Database Observability activate alongside it, so you get correlated, full-stack context on your services, infrastructure, and dependencies from the moment you start sending telemetry.
The knowledge graph replaces the classic Application Observability plugin for new organizations. It automatically discovers your services from OpenTelemetry data, surfaces performance insights, and connects metrics, logs, traces, and profiles in a unified view. You can also access the knowledge graph directly from the command palette.
Automatic environment segmentation
New organizations receive pre-configured rules that partition the knowledge graph based on OpenTelemetry resource attributes, specifically deployment.environment and deployment.environment.name. Telemetry without these attributes defaults to an “unknown” segment. This replicates the environment isolation that Application Observability customers already rely on, with no manual configuration required.
Simplified services catalog
The services catalog presents a streamlined view of all your applications. Every discovered service appears with RED metrics — latency, error ratio, and request rate — alongside instrumentation quality scores that highlight how well each service is instrumented and what to improve.
Streamlined service detail
Service detail pages replace the dense single-page layout with focused tabs for metrics, logs, traces, profiles, and quality reports. Each tab gives you direct access to the relevant signal for a service without context switching.
Top-level configuration
Application Observability settings have moved to Observability > Configuration, removing the deep plugin-level nesting that made global setup harder. You can configure knowledge graph settings, traces, and metrics generation across all active data sources from a single location.
Availability
This change applies to new Grafana Cloud organizations on any tier. Existing Application Observability customers keep the classic experience and aren’t affected. If you’re an existing customer interested in the knowledge graph-powered experience, talk to your account team. We’ll share a broader migration path in an upcoming update.
