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Grafana Alloy is the new name for our distribution of the OTel collector. Grafana Agent has been deprecated and is in Long-Term Support (LTS) through October 31, 2025. Grafana Agent will reach an End-of-Life (EOL) on November 1, 2025. Read more about why we recommend migrating to Grafana Alloy.

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Migrate from Prometheus to Grafana Agent Flow

The built-in Grafana Agent convert command can migrate your Prometheus configuration to a Grafana Agent Flow configuration.

This topic describes how to:

  • Convert a Prometheus configuration to a Grafana Agent Flow configuration.
  • Run a Prometheus configuration natively using Grafana Agent Flow.

Components used in this topic

Before you begin

  • You must have an existing Prometheus configuration.
  • You must have a set of Prometheus applications ready to push telemetry data to Grafana Agent Flow.
  • You must be familiar with the concept of Components in Grafana Agent Flow.

Convert a Prometheus configuration

To fully migrate your configuration fromPrometheus to Grafana Agent Flow, you must convert your Prometheus configuration into a Grafana Agent Flow configuration. This conversion will enable you to take full advantage of the many additional features available in Grafana Agent Flow.

In this task, you will use the convert CLI command to output a Grafana Agent Flow configuration from a Prometheus configuration.

  1. Open a terminal window and run the following command.

    static-binary 
    AGENT_MODE=flow grafana-agent convert --source-format=prometheus --output=<OUTPUT_CONFIG_PATH> <INPUT_CONFIG_PATH>
    flow-binary 
    grafana-agent-flow convert --source-format=prometheus --output=<OUTPUT_CONFIG_PATH> <INPUT_CONFIG_PATH>

    Replace the following:

    • <INPUT_CONFIG_PATH>: The full path to the Prometheus configuration.
    • <OUTPUT_CONFIG_PATH>: The full path to output the Grafana Agent Flow configuration.

  2. Start Grafana Agent Flow using the new Grafana Agent Flow configuration from <OUTPUT_CONFIG_PATH>:

Debugging

  1. If the convert command can’t convert a Prometheus configuration, diagnostic information is sent to stderr.
    You can bypass any non-critical issues and output the Grafana Agent Flow configuration using a best-effort conversion by including the --bypass-errors flag.

    Caution

    If you bypass the errors, the behavior of the converted configuration may not match the original Prometheus configuration.
Make sure you fully test the converted configuration before using it in a production environment.
    static-binary 
    AGENT_MODE=flow grafana-agent convert --source-format=prometheus --bypass-errors --output=<OUTPUT_CONFIG_PATH> <INPUT_CONFIG_PATH>
    flow-binary 
    grafana-agent-flow convert --source-format=prometheus --bypass-errors --output=<OUTPUT_CONFIG_PATH> <INPUT_CONFIG_PATH>

    Replace the following:

    • <INPUT_CONFIG_PATH>: The full path to the Prometheus configuration.
    • <OUTPUT_CONFIG_PATH>: The full path to output the Grafana Agent Flow configuration.

  2. You can also output a diagnostic report by including the --report flag.

    static-binary 
    AGENT_MODE=flow grafana-agent convert --source-format=prometheus --report=<OUTPUT_REPORT_PATH> --output=<OUTPUT_CONFIG_PATH> <INPUT_CONFIG_PATH>
    flow-binary 
    grafana-agent-flow convert --source-format=prometheus --report=<OUTPUT_REPORT_PATH> --output=<OUTPUT_CONFIG_PATH> <INPUT_CONFIG_PATH>

    Replace the following:

    • <INPUT_CONFIG_PATH>: The full path to the Prometheus configuration.
    • <OUTPUT_CONFIG_PATH>: The full path to output the Grafana Agent Flow configuration.
    • <OUTPUT_REPORT_PATH>: The output path for the report.

    Using the example Prometheus configuration below, the diagnostic report provides the following information:

    plaintext 
    (Info) Converted scrape_configs job_name "prometheus" into...
  A prometheus.scrape.prometheus component
(Info) Converted 1 remote_write[s] "grafana-cloud" into...
  A prometheus.remote_write.default component

Run a Prometheus configuration

If you’re not ready to completely switch to a Grafana Agent Flow configuration, you can run Grafana Agent using your existing Prometheus configuration. The --config.format=prometheus flag tells Grafana Agent to convert your Prometheus configuration to a Grafana Agent Flow configuration and load it directly without saving the new configuration. This allows you to try Grafana Agent Flow without modifying your existing Prometheus configuration infrastructure.

In this task, you will use the run CLI command to run Grafana Agent Flow using a Prometheus configuration.

Start Grafana Agent Flow and include the command line flag --config.format=prometheus. Your configuration file must be a valid Prometheus configuration file rather than a Grafana Agent Flow configuration file.

Debugging

  1. You can follow the convert CLI command debugging instructions to generate a diagnostic report.

  2. Refer to the Grafana Agent Flow Debugging for more information about a running Grafana Agent Flow.

  3. If your Prometheus configuration can’t be converted and loaded directly into Grafana Agent Flow, diagnostic information is sent to stderr. You can bypass any non-critical issues and start the Agent by including the --config.bypass-conversion-errors flag in addition to --config.format=prometheus.

    Caution

    If you bypass the errors, the behavior of the converted configuration may not match the original Prometheus configuration. Do not use this flag in a production environment.

Example

This example demonstrates converting a Prometheus configuration file to a Grafana Agent Flow configuration file.

The following Prometheus configuration file provides the input for the conversion.

yaml 
global:
  scrape_timeout:    45s

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: "prometheus"
    static_configs:
      - targets: ["localhost:12345"]

remote_write:
  - name: "grafana-cloud"
    url: "https://prometheus-us-central1.grafana.net/api/prom/push"
    basic_auth:
      username: <USERNAME>
      password: <PASSWORD>

The convert command takes the YAML file as input and outputs a River file.

static-binary 
AGENT_MODE=flow grafana-agent convert --source-format=prometheus --output=<OUTPUT_CONFIG_PATH> <INPUT_CONFIG_PATH>
flow-binary 
grafana-agent-flow convert --source-format=prometheus --output=<OUTPUT_CONFIG_PATH> <INPUT_CONFIG_PATH>

Replace the following:

  • <INPUT_CONFIG_PATH>: The full path to the Prometheus configuration.
  • <OUTPUT_CONFIG_PATH>: The full path to output the Grafana Agent Flow configuration.

The new Grafana Agent Flow configuration file looks like this:

river 
prometheus.scrape "prometheus" {
  targets = [{
    __address__ = "localhost:12345",
  }]
  forward_to     = [prometheus.remote_write.default.receiver]
  job_name       = "prometheus"
  scrape_timeout = "45s"
}

prometheus.remote_write "default" {
  endpoint {
    name = "grafana-cloud"
    url  = "https://prometheus-us-central1.grafana.net/api/prom/push"

    basic_auth {
      username = "USERNAME"
      password = "PASSWORD"
    }

    queue_config {
      capacity             = 2500
      max_shards           = 200
      max_samples_per_send = 500
    }

    metadata_config {
      max_samples_per_send = 500
    }
  }
}

Limitations

Configuration conversion is done on a best-effort basis. Grafana Agent will issue warnings or errors where the conversion can’t be performed.

After the configuration is converted, review the Grafana Agent Flow configuration file created and verify that it’s correct before starting to use it in a production environment.

The following list is specific to the convert command and not Grafana Agent Flow:

  • The following configurations aren’t available for conversion to Grafana Agent Flow: rule_files, alerting, remote_read, storage, and tracing. Any additional unsupported features are returned as errors during conversion.
  • Check if you are using any extra command line arguments with Prometheus that aren’t present in your configuration file. For example, --web.listen-address.
  • Metamonitoring metrics exposed by Grafana Agent Flow usually match Prometheus metamonitoring metrics but will use a different name. Make sure that you use the new metric names, for example, in your alerts and dashboards queries.
  • The logs produced by Grafana Agent Flow differ from those produced by Prometheus.
  • Grafana Agent exposes the Grafana Agent Flow UI.