How to push OpenTelemetry Metrics into self-hosted Grafana container?

Grafana
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For a very small in-house project we like to make our custom app push OpenTelemetry Metrics directly to a self-hosted Grafana cointainer (using grafana/grafana docker image) so we can see them on our dashboard. This shall replace an older solution that used “pull” metrics using GET but standardized OpenTelemetry “push” metrics. We do not need neiter Traces not Logs nor Time Series, but really just pushed single metrics. We cannot use Grafana Cloud as the network is disconnected from the internet.

Unfortunately we cannot find a simple tutorial for this, so we have a lot of “dumb” questions:

  • Does the grafana/grafana docker image support OpenTelemetry Metrics natively or doe we have to install a plug in (which one) or any kind of OpenTelemetry Metrics receiver (which one)?
  • How to create a data source that reads the pushed metrics?

Any help is appreciated! :slight_smile:

2

That’s not possible. Grafana is not a storage. Use other products from Grafana Labs:

  • Mimir - metric storage
  • Loki - log storage
  • Tempo - trace storage

Then Grafana connects to these signal storages.

1 Like
3

Thank you for your kind explanation. So to push metrics to Grafana using OpenTelemetry, Mimir is essentially needed as the push target, and Grafana will pull the data from there. Got it! :slight_smile:

4

Nope, only some metric storage is needed (Mimir is just one from many). You can use OTEL collector and you can push metrics into storage, which you like and which is supported by Grafana (Mimir, Prometheus, InfluxDB,…

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5

I see. Thank you for the clarification!