What is the significance of instance name defined under metrics > config > name in the grafana-agent.yaml file

Grafana Prometheus
1

  • What Grafana version and what operating system are you using?
    Grafana Static Agent version v0.43.3
    OS Oracle LINUX 8

  • What are you trying to achieve?
    I am new to Grafana and trying to understand the Grafana Static Agent configuration file. I understand that Grafana Alloy is the new version but before I switch to Alloy, I would like to understand how Grafana Static Configuration works.

  • How are you trying to achieve it?
    I am configuring grafana-agent.yaml file and have questions on some of the tags in the file.

  • What happened?

  • What did you expect to happen?

  • Can you copy/paste the configuration(s) that you are having problems with?

metrics:

global:
scrape_timeout: “10s”
external_labels:
graf_metrics: “grafana-metrics”
configs:
- name: “prom-instance-01”

  • Did you receive any errors in the Grafana UI or in related logs? If so, please tell us exactly what they were.
    I am trying to understand where is instance name (name: “prom-instance-01”) defined in my grafana-agent.yaml file is used? I don’t see it in the agent’s logs obtained via command “journalctl -u grafana-agent.service --no-pager”. I don’t see it in the Grafana Dashboard either. What is the significance of this instance name?

  • Did you follow any online instructions? If so, what is the URL?

  • metrics_config | Grafana Agent documentation