Infrastructure Setup: Grafana & Tempo

Quick setup scripts for running Grafana and Tempo containers for distributed tracing using Docker Desktop or Podman Desktop.

Tempo Configuration File

Create tempo-config.yml with the following configuration:

server:
  http_listen_port: 3200

distributor:
  receivers:
    otlp:
      protocols:
        http:
        grpc:

storage:
  trace:
    backend: local
    local:
      path: ./data/tempo/blocks
    wal:
      path: ./data/wal/blocks

This configuration enables:

• HTTP API on port 3200
• OTLP receivers for both HTTP and gRPC protocols
• Local storage for traces and write-ahead log

Setup with Podman Desktop

# Cleanup existing containers
podman rm gdev-grafana -f
podman rm gdev-tempo -f

# Create network for container communication
podman network create gdev-net

# Run Grafana and Tempo containers
podman run --network gdev-net --name gdev-grafana -d -p 3000:3000 grafana/grafana
podman run --network gdev-net --name gdev-tempo -d -p 3200:3200 -p 4317:4317 -v ./tempo-config.yml:/etc/tempo-config.yml grafana/tempo "-config.file=/etc/tempo-config.yml"

# Note: Grafana default credentials are admin/admin

Save as setup-with-podman.ps1 and run in PowerShell.

Setup with Docker Desktop

# Cleanup existing containers
docker rm gdev-grafana -f
docker rm gdev-tempo -f

# Create network for container communication  
docker network create gdev-net

# Run Grafana and Tempo containers
docker run --network gdev-net --name gdev-grafana -d -p 3000:3000 grafana/grafana
docker run --network gdev-net --name gdev-tempo -d -p 3200:3200 -p 4317:4317 -v ./tempo-config.yml:/etc/tempo-config.yml grafana/tempo "-config.file=/etc/tempo-config.yml"

# Note: Grafana default credentials are admin/admin

Save as setup-with-docker.ps1 and run in PowerShell.

Setup Validation

Verify that both services are running correctly:

# Check Grafana health
curl -i http://localhost:3000/api/health

# Check Tempo readiness
curl -i http://localhost:3200/ready

Wait until both endpoints return HTTP 200 status code.

Port Configuration

• 3000: Grafana web interface
• 3200: Tempo HTTP API
• 4317: Tempo OTLP gRPC receiver

Access URLs

• Grafana Dashboard: http://localhost:3000
• Tempo API: http://localhost:3200
• Tempo Metrics: http://localhost:3200/metrics

Default Credentials

• Username: admin
• Password: admin

Container Management

# Stop containers
docker stop gdev-grafana gdev-tempo
# or
podman stop gdev-grafana gdev-tempo

# Start containers
docker start gdev-grafana gdev-tempo
# or
podman start gdev-grafana gdev-tempo

# View logs
docker logs gdev-grafana
docker logs gdev-tempo

Data Storage

Tempo stores trace data in the ./data/tempo/blocks directory and write-ahead logs in ./data/wal/blocks. Make sure these directories are writable by the container.

OpenTelemetry Integration

Applications can send traces to Tempo using:

# OTLP HTTP endpoint
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:3200/v1/traces

# OTLP gRPC endpoint  
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4317

Grafana Data Source

Add Tempo as a data source in Grafana:

• URL: http://gdev-tempo:3200 (container network)
• URL: http://localhost:3200 (host network)

Use Cases

• Distributed tracing collection
• Microservices observability
• Performance monitoring
• Request flow visualization
• Trace correlation with logs and metrics