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Access or install Explore Traces

Note

Explore Traces is currently in public preview. Grafana Labs offers limited support, and breaking changes might occur prior to the feature being made generally available.

You can access Explore Traces using any of these:

  • Grafana Cloud: The easiest method, since no setup or installation is required.
  • Self-managed Grafana open source or Enterprise: You must install the Explore Traces plugin.

Explore Traces requires Grafana Tempo 2.6 or later with TraceQL metrics configured.

Set up in Grafana Cloud

To use Explore Traces with Grafana Cloud, you need the following:

  • Grafana Cloud account
  • Grafana stack in Grafana Cloud with a configured Tempo data source receiving tracing data

Set up in self-managed Grafana

To use Explore Traces with self-managed Grafana open source or Grafana Enterprise, you need:

Next, access Explore Traces.

Install the Explore Traces plugin

Explore Traces is distributed as a Grafana Plugin. You can find it in the official Grafana Plugin Directory.

Install in your Grafana instance

You can install Explore Traces in your Grafana instance using grafana cli:

shell 
grafana cli --pluginUrl=https://storage.googleapis.com/integration-artifacts/grafana-exploretraces-app/grafana-exploretraces-app-latest.zip plugins install grafana-traces-app

Alternatively, follow these steps to install Explore Traces in Grafana:

  1. In Grafana, go to Administration > Plugins and data > Plugins.
  2. Search for “Explore Traces”.
  3. Select Explore Traces.
  4. Click Install.

The plugin is automatically activated after installation.

Install in a Docker container

To install the app in a Docker container, configure the following environment variable:

shell 
GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=https://storage.googleapis.com/integration-artifacts/grafana-exploretraces-app/grafana-exploretraces-app-latest.zip;grafana-traces-app

Access Explore Traces

To access Explore Traces, use the following steps:

  1. Open your Grafana stack in a web browser.
  2. In the main menu, select Explore > Traces.