Important: This documentation is about an older version. It's relevant only to the release noted, many of the features and functions have been updated or replaced. Please view the current version.

Documentation Grafana Agent Flow mode Release notes

Release notes for Grafana Agent Flow

The release notes provide information about deprecations and breaking changes in Grafana Agent Flow.

For a complete list of changes to Grafana Agent, with links to pull requests and related issues when available, refer to the Changelog.

v0.40

Breaking change: Prohibit the configuration of services within modules.

Previously it was possible to configure the HTTP service via the HTTP config block inside of a module. This functionality is now only available in the main configuration.

Breaking change: Change the default value of disable_high_cardinality_metrics to true.

The disable_high_cardinality_metrics configuration argument is used by otelcol.exporter components such as otelcol.exporter.otlp. If you need to see high cardinality metrics containing labels such as IP addresses and port numbers, you now have to explicitly set disable_high_cardinality_metrics to false.

Breaking change: Rename component prometheus.exporter.agent to prometheus.exporter.self

The name prometheus.exporter.agent is potentially ambiguous and can be misinterpreted as an exporter for Prometheus Agent. The new name reflects the component’s true purpose as an exporter of the process’s own metrics.

Deprecation: classic modules have been deprecated and will be removed in a future release

Classic modules (the module.git, module.file, module.http, and module.string components) have been deprecated in favor of the new import and declare configuration blocks.

Support for classic modules will be removed in a future release.

Deprecation: prometheus.exporter.vsphere is deprecated and will be removed in a future release

The prometheus.exporter.vsphere component has been deprecated in favor of otelcol.receiver.vcenter.

Support for prometheus.exporter.vsphere will be removed in a future release.

v0.39

Breaking change: otelcol.receiver.prometheus will drop all otel_scope_info metrics when converting them to OTLP

• If the otel_scope_info metric has the otel_scope_name and otel_scope_version labels, their values are used to set the OTLP Instrumentation Scope name and version, respectively.
• Labels for otel_scope_info metrics other than otel_scope_name and otel_scope_version are added as scope attributes with the matching name and version.

Breaking change: label for target block in prometheus.exporter.blackbox is removed

Previously in prometheus.exporter.blackbox, the target block requires a label which is used in job’s name. In this version, user needs to be specify name attribute instead, which allow less restrictive naming.

Old configuration example:

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prometheus.exporter.blackbox "example" {
  config_file = "blackbox_modules.yml"

  target "grafana" {
    address = "http://grafana.com"
    module  = "http_2xx"
    labels = {
      "env": "dev",
    }
  }
}

New configuration example:

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prometheus.exporter.blackbox "example" {
  config_file = "blackbox_modules.yml"

  target {
    name     = "grafana"
    address = "http://grafana.com"
    module  = "http_2xx"
    labels = {
      "env": "dev",
    }
  }
}

v0.38

Breaking change: otelcol.exporter.jaeger component removed

The deprecated otelcol.exporter.jaeger component has been removed. To send traces to Jaeger, use otelcol.exporter.otlp and a version of Jaeger that supports OTLP.

v0.37

Breaking change: Renamed non_indexed_labels Loki processing stage to structured_metadata.

If you use the Loki processing stage in your Grafana Agent Flow configuration, you must rename the non_indexed_labels pipeline stage definition to structured_metadata.

Old configuration example:

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stage.non_indexed_labels {
    values = {"app" = ""}
}

New configuration example:

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stage.structured_metadata {
    values = {"app" = ""}
}

Breaking change: otelcol.exporter.prometheus scope labels updated

There are 2 changes to the way scope labels work for this component.

• Previously, the include_scope_info argument would trigger including otel_scope_name and otel_scope_version in metrics. This is now defaulted to true and controlled via the include_scope_labels argument.

• A bugfix was made to rename otel_scope_info metric labels from name to otel_scope_name and version to otel_scope_version. This is now correct with the OTLP Instrumentation Scope specification.

Breaking change: prometheus.exporter.unix now requires a label.

Previously the exporter was a singleton and did not require a label. The exporter now can be used multiple times and needs a label.

Old configuration example:

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prometheus.exporter.unix { /* ... */ }

New configuration example:

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prometheus.exporter.unix "example" { /* ... */ }

v0.36

Breaking change: The default value of retry_on_http_429 is changed to true for the queue_config in prometheus.remote_write

The default value of retry_on_http_429 is changed from false to true for the queue_config block in prometheus.remote_write so that Grafana Agent can retry sending and avoid data being lost for metric pipelines by default.

• If you set the retry_on_http_429 explicitly - no action is required.
• If you do not set retry_on_http_429 explicitly and you do not want to retry on HTTP 429, make sure you set it to false as you upgrade to this new version.

Breaking change: loki.source.file no longer automatically extracts logs from compressed files

loki.source.file component will no longer automatically detect and decompress logs from compressed files (this was an undocumented behaviour).

This file-extension-based detection of compressed files has been replaced by a new configuration block that explicitly enables and specifies the compression format. By default, the decompression of files is entirely disabled.

How to migrate:

• If Grafana Agent Flow never reads logs from files with extensions .gz, .tar.gz, .z or .bz2 then no action is required.

  You can check what are the file extensions Grafana Agent Flow reads from by looking at the path label on loki_source_file_file_bytes_total metric.

• If Grafana Agent Flow extracts data from compressed files, please add the following configuration block to your loki.source.file component:

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  loki.source.file "example" {
    ...
    decompression {
      enabled       = true
      format        = "<compression format>"
    }
  }

  where the <compression format> is the appropriate compression format - see loki.source.file documentation for details.

v0.35

Breaking change: auth and version attributes from walk_params block of prometheus.exporter.snmp have been removed

The prometheus.exporter.snmp flow component wraps a new version of SNMP exporter which introduces a new configuration file format. This new format separates the walk and metric mappings from the connection and authentication settings. This allows for easier configuration of different auth params without having to duplicate the full walk and metric mapping.

Old configuration example:

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prometheus.exporter.snmp "example" {
   config_file = "snmp_modules.yml"

    target "network_switch_1" {
        address     = "192.168.1.2"
        module      = "if_mib"
        walk_params = "public"
    }

    walk_param "public" {
        retries = "2"
        version = "2"
        auth {
            community = "public"
        }
    }
}

New configuration example:

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prometheus.exporter.snmp "example" {
   config_file = "snmp_modules.yml"

    target "network_switch_1" {
        address     = "192.168.1.2"
        module      = "if_mib"
        walk_params = "public"
        auth        = "public_v2"
    }

    walk_param "public" {
        retries = "2"
    }
}

See Module and Auth Split Migration for more details.

Breaking change: discovery.file has been renamed to local.file_match

The discovery.file component has been renamed to local.file_match to make its purpose more clear: to find files on the local filesystem matching a pattern.

Renaming discovery.file to local.file_match also resolves a point of confusion where discovery.file was thought to implement Prometheus’ file service discovery.

Old configuration example:

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discovery.kubernetes "k8s" {
  role = "pod"
}

discovery.relabel "k8s" {
  targets = discovery.kubernetes.k8s.targets

  rule {
    source_labels = ["__meta_kubernetes_namespace", "__meta_kubernetes_pod_label_name"]
    target_label  = "job"
    separator     = "/"
  }

  rule {
    source_labels = ["__meta_kubernetes_pod_uid", "__meta_kubernetes_pod_container_name"]
    target_label  = "__path__"
    separator     = "/"
    replacement   = "/var/log/pods/*$1/*.log"
  }
}

discovery.file "pods" {
  path_targets = discovery.relabel.k8s.output
}

New configuration example:

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discovery.kubernetes "k8s" {
  role = "pod"
}

discovery.relabel "k8s" {
  targets = discovery.kubernetes.k8s.targets

  rule {
    source_labels = ["__meta_kubernetes_namespace", "__meta_kubernetes_pod_label_name"]
    target_label  = "job"
    separator     = "/"
  }

  rule {
    source_labels = ["__meta_kubernetes_pod_uid", "__meta_kubernetes_pod_container_name"]
    target_label  = "__path__"
    separator     = "/"
    replacement   = "/var/log/pods/*$1/*.log"
  }
}

local.file_match "pods" {
  path_targets = discovery.relabel.k8s.output
}

Breaking change: discovery_target_decode has been removed from the River standard library

The discovery_target_decode function was initially added to the River standard library as an equivalent to Prometheus’ file-based discovery and HTTP-based discovery methods.

However, the Prometheus discovery mechanisms have more functionality than discovery_target_decode:

• Prometheus’ file_sd_configs can use many files based on pattern matching.
• Prometheus’ http_sd_configs also support YAML files.

Additionally, it is no longer an accepted pattern to have component-specific functions to the River standard library.

As a result, discovery_target_decode has been removed in favor of using components.

Old configuration example:

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remote.http "example" {
    url = URL_CONTAINING_TARGETS
}

prometehus.scrape "example" {
    targets    = discovery_target_decode(remote.http.example.content)
    forward_to = FORWARD_LIST
}

New configuration example:

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discovery.http "example" {
    url = URL_CONTAINING_TARGETS
}

prometehus.scrape "example" {
    targets    = discovery.http.example.targets
    forward_to = FORWARD_LIST
}

Breaking change: The algorithm for the “hash” action of otelcol.processor.attributes has changed

The hash produced when using action = "hash" in the otelcol.processor.attributes flow component is now using the more secure SHA-256 algorithm. The change was made in PR #22831 of opentelemetry-collector-contrib.

Breaking change: otelcol.exporter.loki now includes instrumentation scope in its output

Additional instrumentation_scope information will be added to the OTLP log signal, like this:

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{
    "body": "Example log",
    "traceid": "01020304000000000000000000000000",
    "spanid": "0506070800000000",
    "severity": "error",
    "attributes": {
        "attr1": "1",
        "attr2": "2"
    },
    "resources": {
        "host.name": "something"
    },
    "instrumentation_scope": {
        "name": "example-logger-name",
        "version": "v1"
    }
}

Breaking change: otelcol.extension.jaeger_remote_sampling removes the / HTTP endpoint

The / HTTP endpoint was the same as the /sampling endpoint. The /sampling endpoint is still functional. The change was made in PR #18070 of opentelemetry-collector-contrib.

Breaking change: The remote_sampling block has been removed from otelcol.receiver.jaeger

The remote_sampling block in otelcol.receiver.jaeger has been an undocumented no-op configuration for some time, and has now been removed. Customers are advised to use otelcol.extension.jaeger_remote_sampling instead.

Deprecation: otelcol.exporter.jaeger has been deprecated and will be removed in Grafana Agent Flow v0.38.0.

This is because Jaeger supports OTLP directly and OpenTelemetry Collector is also removing its Jaeger receiver.

v0.34

Breaking change: phlare.scrape and phlare.write have been renamed to pyroscope.scrape and pyroscope.scrape

Old configuration example:

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phlare.write "staging" {
  endpoint {
    url = "http://phlare:4100"
  }
}

phlare.scrape "default" {
  targets = [
    {"__address__" = "agent:12345", "app"="agent"},
  ]
  forward_to = [phlare.write.staging.receiver]
}

New configuration example:

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pyroscope.write "staging" {
  endpoint {
    url = "http://pyroscope:4100"
  }
}

pyroscope.scrape "default" {
  targets = [
    {"__address__" = "agent:12345", "app"="agent"},
  ]
  forward_to = [pyroscope.write.staging.receiver]
}

v0.33

Symbolic links in Docker containers removed

We’ve removed the deprecated symbolic links to /bin/agent* in Docker containers, as planned in v0.31. In case you’re setting a custom entrypoint, use the new binaries that are prefixed with /bin/grafana*.

v0.32

Breaking change: http_client_config Flow blocks merged with parent blocks

To reduce the amount of typing required to write Flow components, the arguments and subblocks found in http_client_config have been merged with their parent blocks:

• discovery.docker > http_client_config is merged into the discovery.docker block.
• discovery.kubernetes > http_client_config is merged into the discovery.kubernetes block.
• loki.source.kubernetes > client > http_client_config is merged into the client block.
• loki.source.podlogs > client > http_client_config is merged into the client block.
• loki.write > endpoint > http_client_config is merged into the endpoint block.
• mimir.rules.kubernetes > http_client_config is merged into the mimir.rules.kubernetes block.
• otelcol.receiver.opencensus > grpc is merged into the otelcol.receiver.opencensus block.
• otelcol.receiver.zipkin > http is merged into the otelcol.receiver.zipkin block.
• phlare.scrape > http_client_config is merged into the phlare.scrape block.
• phlare.write > endpoint > http_client_config is merged into the endpoint block.
• prometheus.remote_write > endpoint > http_client_config is merged into the endpoint block.
• prometheus.scrape > http_client_config is merged into the prometheus.scrape block.

Old configuration example:

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prometheus.remote_write "example" {
  endpoint {
    url = URL

    http_client_config {
      basic_auth {
        username = BASIC_AUTH_USERNAME
        password = BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD
      }
    }
  }
}

New configuration example:

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prometheus.remote_write "example" {
  endpoint {
    url = URL

    basic_auth {
      username = BASIC_AUTH_USERNAME
      password = BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD
    }
  }
}

Breaking change: loki.process stage blocks combined into new blocks

Previously, to add a stage to loki.process, two blocks were needed: a block called stage, then an inner block for the stage being written. Stage blocks are now a single block called stage.STAGENAME.

Old configuration example:

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loki.process "example" {
  forward_to = RECEIVER_LIST

  stage {
    docker {}
  }

  stage {
    json {
      expressions = { output = "log", extra = "" }
    }
  }
}

New configuration example:

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loki.process "example" {
  forward_to = RECEIVER_LIST

  stage.docker {}

  stage.json {
    expressions = { output = "log", extra = "" }
  }
}

Breaking change: client_options block renamed in remote.s3 component

To synchronize naming conventions between remote.s3 and remote.http, the client_options block has been renamed client.

Old configuration example:

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remote.s3 "example" {
  path = S3_PATH

  client_options {
    key    = ACCESS_KEY
    secret = KEY_SECRET
  }
}

New configuration example:

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remote.s3 "example" {
  path = S3_PATH

  client {
    key    = ACCESS_KEY
    secret = KEY_SECRET
  }
}

Breaking change: prometheus.integration.node_exporter component name changed

The prometheus.integration.node_exporter component has been renamed to prometheus.exporter.unix. unix was chosen as a name to approximate the *nix-like systems the exporter supports.

Old configuration example:

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prometheus.integration.node_exporter { }

New configuration example:

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prometheus.exporter.unix { }

Breaking change: support for EXPERIMENTAL_ENABLE_FLOW environment variable removed

As first announced in v0.30.0, support for using the EXPERIMENTAL_ENABLE_FLOW environment variable to enable Flow mode has been removed.

To enable Grafana Agent Flow, set the AGENT_MODE environment variable to flow.

v0.31

Breaking change: binary names are now prefixed with grafana-

As first announced in v0.29, the agent release binary name is now prefixed with grafana-:

• agent is now grafana-agent.

For the grafana/agent Docker container, the entrypoint is now /bin/grafana-agent. A symbolic link from /bin/agent to the new binary has been added.

Symbolic links will be removed in v0.33. Custom entrypoints must be updated prior to v0.33 to use the new binaries before the symbolic links get removed.

v0.30

Deprecation: EXPERIMENTAL_ENABLE_FLOW environment variable changed

As part of graduating Grafana Agent Flow to beta, the EXPERIMENTAL_ENABLE_FLOW environment variable is replaced by setting AGENT_MODE to flow.

Setting EXPERIMENTAL_ENABLE_FLOW to 1 or true is now deprecated and support for it will be removed for the v0.32 release.

v0.29

Deprecation: binary names will be prefixed with grafana- in v0.31.0

The binary name agent has been deprecated and will be renamed to grafana-agent in the v0.31.0 release.

As part of this change, the Docker containers for the v0.31.0 release will include symbolic links from the old binary names to the new binary names.

There is no action to take at this time.