OpenTelemetry and Grafana

In this example we will show how to visualize CloudQuery (opens in a new tab) OpenTelemetry (opens in a new tab) traces, metrics and logs with Grafana (opens in a new tab). We will use Docker Compose (opens in a new tab) to run Grafana (opens in a new tab) and related services, so make sure you it installed on your machine.

Step 1: Creating a Docker Compose file

We will use Tempo (opens in a new tab) for ingesting traces, Loki (opens in a new tab) for logs, Prometheus (opens in a new tab) for metrics, and the OpenTelemetry collector (opens in a new tab) for collecting and forwarding the data to each service.

Create a file named docker-compose.yml with the following content:

version: "3.8"
services:
  tempo:
    image: grafana/tempo:latest
    command: ["-config.file=/etc/tempo.yaml"]
    volumes:
      - tempo_data:/tmp
      - ./tempo/tempo.yaml:/etc/tempo.yaml
    ports:
      - "3200"
      - "4318"
  loki:
    image: grafana/loki:latest
    ports:
      - "3100"
    command: -config.file=/etc/loki/local-config.yaml
  collector:
    image: otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib:latest
    ports:
      - "4318:4318" # 4318 needs to be exposed to the host for the collector to ingest data
      - "8090"
    volumes:
      - ./collector/collector.yaml:/etc/otelcol-contrib/config.yaml
  prometheus:
    image: prom/prometheus:latest
    command:
      - "--enable-feature=remote-write-receiver"
      - "--config.file=/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yaml"
    ports:
      - "9090"
    volumes:
      - prometheus:/prometheus
      - ./prometheus/prometheus.yaml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yaml
  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana-enterprise
    volumes:
      - grafana_data:/var/lib/grafana
      - ./grafana/datasources.yaml:/etc/grafana/provisioning/datasources/datasources.yaml
      - ./grafana/dashboards.yaml:/etc/grafana/provisioning/dashboards/dashboards.yaml
      - ./grafana/cloudquery-dashboard.json:/var/lib/grafana/dashboards/cloudquery-dashboard.json
    environment:
      GF_FEATURE_TOGGLES_ENABLE: "tempoApmTable"
    ports:
      - "3000:3000" # 3000 needs to be exposed to the host for the Grafana UI
volumes:
  prometheus:
    driver: local
  grafana_data:
    driver: local
  tempo_data:
    driver: local

This Docker Compose file configures Prometheus (opens in a new tab), Tempo (opens in a new tab), an OpenTelemetry collector (opens in a new tab) and Grafana with a custom configuration, and Loki (opens in a new tab) with the default configuration.

Step 2: Configure Prometheus

Create a file with the path prometheus/prometheus.yaml with the following content:

global:
  scrape_interval: 15s
scrape_configs:
  - job_name: "opentelemetry"
    static_configs:
      - targets: ["collector:8090"]

This configuration will tell Prometheus (opens in a new tab) to scrape the OpenTelemetry (opens in a new tab) collector every 15 seconds.

Step 3: Configure Tempo

Create a file with the path tempo/tempo.yaml with the following content:

server:
  http_listen_port: 3200
distributor:
  receivers:
    otlp:
      protocols:
        http:
storage:
  trace:
    backend: local
    wal:
      path: /tmp/tempo/wal
    local:
      path: /tmp/tempo/blocks
# Needed for aggregation functions, e.g. quantile_over_time
# Visit https://grafana.com/docs/tempo/latest/traceql/metrics-queries/ for more information
query_frontend:
  search:
    max_duration: 0
  metrics:
    max_duration: 0
overrides:
  metrics_generator_processors: ["local-blocks"]
metrics_generator:
  processor:
    local_blocks:
      filter_server_spans: false
  storage:
    path: /var/tempo/generator/wal
  traces_storage:
    path: /var/tempo/generator/traces

This configuration will tell Tempo (opens in a new tab) to listen on port 3200 and receive OpenTelemetry (opens in a new tab) traces via HTTP on the default port of 4318.

Step 4: Configure the OpenTelemetry collector

Create a file with the path collector/collector.yaml with the following content:

receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      http:
        endpoint: "0.0.0.0:4318"
processors:
  batch:
exporters:
  prometheus:
    endpoint: collector:8090
  otlphttp:
    endpoint: http://tempo:4318
  loki:
    endpoint: http://loki:3100/loki/api/v1/push
service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [otlphttp]
    metrics:
      receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [prometheus]
    logs:
      receivers: [otlp]
      exporters: [loki]

This configuration will tell the OpenTelemetry collector (opens in a new tab) to receive traces, metrics, and logs and forward them to Tempo (opens in a new tab), Prometheus (opens in a new tab) and Loki (opens in a new tab), respectively.

Step 5: Configure Grafana Data Sources

Create a file with the path grafana/datasources.yaml with the following content:

apiVersion: 1
datasources:
  - name: Prometheus
    type: prometheus
    access: proxy
    orgId: 1
    url: http://prometheus:9090
    basicAuth: false
    isDefault: false
    version: 1
    editable: true
    uid: prometheus
  - name: Loki
    type: loki
    access: proxy
    orgId: 1
    url: http://loki:3100
    basicAuth: false
    isDefault: false
    version: 1
    editable: true
    uid: loki
  - name: Tempo
    type: tempo
    access: proxy
    orgId: 1
    url: http://tempo:3200
    basicAuth: false
    isDefault: true
    version: 1
    editable: true
    apiVersion: 1
    uid: tempo

This configuration will tell Grafana (opens in a new tab) to use Prometheus (opens in a new tab), Loki (opens in a new tab), and Tempo (opens in a new tab) as data sources.

Step 6: Download the CloudQuery Grafana Dashboard

Create a file with the path grafana/cloudquery-dashboard.json with the content from here.

If you'd like to import the dashboard to an existing Grafana instance, you can download an external version of it from here.

Step 7: Configure Grafana with the CloudQuery Dashboard

Create a file with the path grafana/dashboards.yaml with the following content:

apiVersion: 1

providers:
  - name: CloudQuery
    folder: CloudQuery
    type: file
    allowUiUpdates: true
    options:
      path: /var/lib/grafana/dashboards

This configuration will tell Grafana (opens in a new tab) to load the CloudQuery (opens in a new tab) dashboard.

Step 8: Start the services

Run docker-compose up to start the services. Once the services are up and running, you should be able to access Grafana (opens in a new tab) at http://localhost:3000 (opens in a new tab) with the default credentials admin:admin.

Step 9: Configure a Source Plugin with OpenTelemetry

You can use the example source configuration below to start a sync with OpenTelemetry (opens in a new tab) enabled:

kind: source
spec:
  name: "aws"
  path: "cloudquery/aws"
  registry: "cloudquery"
  version: "v27.18.0"
  tables: ["aws_s3_buckets"]
  destinations: ["postgresql"]
  otel_endpoint: "0.0.0.0:4318"
  otel_endpoint_insecure: true
  spec:

Step 10: Run the sync

Run cloudquery sync spec.yml --log-level debug.

Running with --log-level debug is recommended to get more detailed logs about requests retries and errors.

After ingestion starts, you can access the dashboard (opens in a new tab) to see sync insights, traces, metrics, and logs.

OpenTelemetry and Datadog Managing Versions