Book Image

Observability with Grafana

By : Rob Chapman, Peter Holmes
Book Image

Observability with Grafana

By: Rob Chapman, Peter Holmes

Overview of this book

To overcome application monitoring and observability challenges, Grafana Labs offers a modern, highly scalable, cost-effective Loki, Grafana, Tempo, and Mimir (LGTM) stack along with Prometheus for the collection, visualization, and storage of telemetry data. Beginning with an overview of observability concepts, this book teaches you how to instrument code and monitor systems in practice using standard protocols and Grafana libraries. As you progress, you’ll create a free Grafana cloud instance and deploy a demo application to a Kubernetes cluster to delve into the implementation of the LGTM stack. You’ll learn how to connect Grafana Cloud to AWS, GCP, and Azure to collect infrastructure data, build interactive dashboards, make use of service level indicators and objectives to produce great alerts, and leverage the AI & ML capabilities to keep your systems healthy. You’ll also explore real user monitoring with Faro and performance monitoring with Pyroscope and k6. Advanced concepts like architecting a Grafana installation, using automation and infrastructure as code tools for DevOps processes, troubleshooting strategies, and best practices to avoid common pitfalls will also be covered. After reading this book, you’ll be able to use the Grafana stack to deliver amazing operational results for the systems your organization uses.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Part 1: Get Started with Grafana and Observability
5
Part 2: Implement Telemetry in Grafana
10
Part 3: Grafana in Practice
15
Part 4: Advanced Applications and Best Practices of Grafana

Grafana Alerting

Grafana Alerting is the first of three major components of Grafana’s Incident Response and Management (IRM) toolset. Grafana Alerting itself comes with no additional licensing costs, and it is an ideal solution for smaller organizations while forming the foundation of the IRM tools in larger organizations.

The IRM features can be accessed from the main Grafana menu under the Alerts & IRM tab:

Figure 9.1 – The Grafana Alerts & IRM main screen

Figure 9.1 – The Grafana Alerts & IRM main screen

Grafana Alerting continuously evaluates user-created alert rules for alert-worthy states, following predefined steps to send messages to the chosen notification channel.

Next, we will see how to set up alert rules, get your contact points and notification policies right, silence alerts when needed, and set up teams and team members.

Alert rules

The main configuration screen for Grafana Alerting is the Alert Rules screen. This allows you to set up new rules and see...