Menu
Documentationbreadcrumb arrow Grafana Cloudbreadcrumb arrow Monitor applicationsbreadcrumb arrow Application Observabilitybreadcrumb arrow Set up a Collectorbreadcrumb arrow Grafana Alloy
Grafana Cloud

Application Observability with Grafana Alloy

Grafana Alloy is a vendor-neutral distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector and the recommended and supported way to send OpenTelemetry data to Grafana Cloud.

Before you begin

To set up Grafana Alloy to send data to Grafana Cloud:

Grafana requires you to run Alloy on every host for Application Observability to function optimally. This also allows Grafana to seamlessly correlate data between Application and Infrastructure observability.

If you’ve already set up Alloy, configure your application to use it.

For most use cases, Grafana Labs recommends to use the OpenTelemetry (OTLP) with Grafana Alloy Grafana Cloud integration tile to configure Alloy.

Manually configure Alloy

It’s recommended to use the OpenTelemetry (OTLP) with Grafana Alloy integration to generate a configuration file.

For advanced use cases you can manually configure the alloy-config.river configuration file to run Grafana Alloy in flow mode:

river 
otelcol.receiver.otlp "default" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.receiver.otlp/

	// configures the default grpc endpoint "0.0.0.0:4317"
	grpc { }
	// configures the default http/protobuf endpoint "0.0.0.0:4318"
	http { }

	output {
		metrics = [otelcol.processor.resourcedetection.default.input]
		logs    = [otelcol.processor.resourcedetection.default.input]
		traces  = [otelcol.processor.resourcedetection.default.input]
	}
}

otelcol.processor.resourcedetection "default" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.processor.resourcedetection/
	detectors = ["env", "system"] // add "gcp", "ec2", "ecs", "elastic_beanstalk", "eks", "lambda", "azure", "aks", "consul", "heroku"  if you want to use cloud resource detection

	system {
		hostname_sources = ["os"]
	}

	output {
		metrics = [otelcol.processor.transform.drop_unneeded_resource_attributes.input]
		logs    = [otelcol.processor.transform.drop_unneeded_resource_attributes.input]
		traces  = [otelcol.processor.transform.drop_unneeded_resource_attributes.input]
	}
}

otelcol.processor.transform "drop_unneeded_resource_attributes" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.processor.transform/
	error_mode = "ignore"

	trace_statements {
		context    = "resource"
		statements = [
			"delete_key(attributes, \"k8s.pod.start_time\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"os.description\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"os.type\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.command_args\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.executable.path\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.pid\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.description\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.name\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.version\")",
		]
	}

	metric_statements {
		context    = "resource"
		statements = [
			"delete_key(attributes, \"k8s.pod.start_time\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"os.description\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"os.type\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.command_args\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.executable.path\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.pid\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.description\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.name\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.version\")",
		]
	}

	log_statements {
		context    = "resource"
		statements = [
			"delete_key(attributes, \"k8s.pod.start_time\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"os.description\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"os.type\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.command_args\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.executable.path\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.pid\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.description\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.name\")",
			"delete_key(attributes, \"process.runtime.version\")",
		]
	}

	output {
		metrics = [otelcol.processor.transform.add_resource_attributes_as_metric_attributes.input]
		logs    = [otelcol.processor.batch.default.input]
		traces  = [
			otelcol.processor.batch.default.input,
			otelcol.connector.host_info.default.input,
		]
	}
}

otelcol.connector.host_info "default" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.connector.host_info/
	host_identifiers = ["host.name"]

	output {
		metrics = [otelcol.processor.batch.default.input]
	}
}

otelcol.processor.transform "add_resource_attributes_as_metric_attributes" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.processor.transform/
	error_mode = "ignore"

	metric_statements {
		context    = "datapoint"
		statements = [
			"set(attributes[\"deployment.environment\"], resource.attributes[\"deployment.environment\"])",
			"set(attributes[\"service.version\"], resource.attributes[\"service.version\"])",
		]
	}

	output {
		metrics = [otelcol.processor.batch.default.input]
	}
}

otelcol.processor.batch "default" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.processor.batch/
	output {
		metrics = [otelcol.exporter.otlphttp.grafana_cloud.input]
		logs    = [otelcol.exporter.otlphttp.grafana_cloud.input]
		traces  = [otelcol.exporter.otlphttp.grafana_cloud.input]
	}
}

otelcol.exporter.otlphttp "grafana_cloud" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.exporter.otlphttp/
	client {
		endpoint = env("GRAFANA_CLOUD_OTLP_ENDPOINT")
		auth     = otelcol.auth.basic.grafana_cloud.handler
	}
}

otelcol.auth.basic "grafana_cloud" {
	// https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/reference/components/otelcol.auth.basic/
	username = env("GRAFANA_CLOUD_INSTANCE_ID")
	password = env("GRAFANA_CLOUD_API_KEY")
}

The configuration file requires you to set several environmental variables:

Environment VariableDescriptionExample
GRAFANA_CLOUD_API_KEYAPI key generated aboveeyJvSomeLongStringJ9fQ==
GRAFANA_CLOUD_OTLP_ENDPOINTOTLP endpoint from Grafana Cloud > OpenTelemetry > Configurehttps://otlp-endpoint-***.grafana.net/otlp
GRAFANA_CLOUD_INSTANCE_IDInstance ID from Grafana Cloud > OpenTelemetry > Configure11111

Run Grafana Alloy

Create the alloy-config.river configuration file, set the necessary environment variables, and run Grafana Alloy.

Configure your application

Set the following environment variables to configure your application to use Alloy:

ConfigurationOptionsResult
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=<host>http://localhost:4318, remote host addressThe default local host address, or a remote host address.
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=<protocol>grpc, http/protobufThe default http/protobuf protocol or grpc

For example, for a local Grafana Alloy set the following environment variables:

shell 
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4317
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=grpc

Then restart your application.

Next steps

  1. Observe your services in Application Observability