"Invalid API key" error when setting up remote_write in prometheus

Grafana Cloud
#1

When I run
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer <my api key>" https://xxxxxx.grafana.net/api/dashboards/home
It works perfectly, no “unauthenticated” errors.

But when I set up prometheus’ remote_write like this:

remote_write:
      - url: <url that I found using docs https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/metrics-prometheus/>
        basic_auth:
          username: <username that I found using docs https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/metrics-prometheus/>
          password: <my api key>

It results in authentication error: invalid API key in logs.

I’ve tried replacing the basic_auth with authorization:

authorization:
  credentials: <my api key>

But it showed legacy auth cannot be upgraded because the host is not found in logs.

What am I doing wrong? :confused:

#2

Hello!

The API key you’re using in that first command calls to your grafana.net instance which requires the kind of API key generated from within the your grafana.net instance under Configurations > API Keys (https://<instance_slug>.grafana.net/org/apikeys) . You likely generated the API key from there and therefore it works to authenticate with that Grafana instance.

However the kind of API key you need for remote_write to a Grafana Cloud metrics endpoint (Prometheus) requires a Grafana Cloud account-level API key which is found in your account’s Cloud Portal (https://www.grafana.com/<account_slug>/api-keys). You’ll need at MetricsPublisher level API key for remote_write metrics pushing.

My assumption here is that you are using a grafana.net API key for the remote_write run and that this is why it is failing – it is the wrong kind of API key. Please generate a MetricsPublisher key from your Cloud Portal and try again. This should work.

1 Like
#3

Thanks, that solved the problem.

1 Like