Grafana Tempo

Key Features

• Multi-protocol trace ingestion supporting OpenTelemetry OTLP (gRPC/HTTP), Jaeger, and Zipkin formats
• Object storage backend support for cost-effective long-term trace retention at massive scale
• TraceQL query language for advanced trace search and filtering capabilities
• Grafana integration with native Tempo data source for trace visualization and exploration
• Minimal infrastructure requirements with no external database dependencies
• Automatic trace sampling and retention policies to manage storage costs
• Service map generation from trace data to visualize microservice dependencies
• Correlation with logs and metrics through Grafana's unified observability interface

Common Use Cases

• 1Microservices performance monitoring and latency analysis across distributed architectures
• 2Root cause analysis for complex distributed system failures and bottlenecks
• 3API response time optimization through detailed request flow tracing
• 4Service dependency mapping and architecture visualization in cloud-native environments
• 5Development team debugging of inter-service communication issues
• 6SRE incident response with trace-driven investigation workflows
• 7Cost-effective observability implementation for startups and growing engineering teams

Prerequisites

• Docker and Docker Compose with at least 1GB available RAM for both services
• Understanding of distributed tracing concepts and OpenTelemetry instrumentation
• Application instrumentation already configured to export traces via OTLP, Jaeger, or Zipkin
• Tempo configuration file (tempo.yaml) prepared with storage and receiver settings
• Available ports 3000 (Grafana), 3200 (Tempo API), 4317 (OTLP gRPC), and 4318 (OTLP HTTP)
• Basic knowledge of Grafana dashboard creation and data source configuration

docker-compose.yml

1services: 
2  tempo: 
3    image: grafana/tempo:latest
4    container_name: tempo
5    restart: unless-stopped
6    command: 
7      - -config.file=/etc/tempo/tempo.yaml
8    volumes: 
9      - ./tempo/tempo.yaml:/etc/tempo/tempo.yaml:ro
10      - tempo_data:/tmp/tempo
11    ports: 
12      - "3200:3200"
13      - "4317:4317"
14      - "4318:4318"
15    networks: 
16      - tempo-network
17
18  grafana: 
19    image: grafana/grafana:latest
20    container_name: grafana
21    restart: unless-stopped
22    environment: 
23      GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD: ${GRAFANA_PASSWORD}
24    ports: 
25      - "3000:3000"
26    depends_on: 
27      - tempo
28    networks: 
29      - tempo-network
30
31volumes: 
32  tempo_data: 
33
34networks: 
35  tempo-network: 
36    driver: bridge

.env Template

1GRAFANA_PASSWORD=admin

Usage Notes

Individual Services(2 services)

Copy individual services to mix and match with your existing compose files.

tempo:
  image: grafana/tempo:latest
  container_name: tempo
  restart: unless-stopped
  command:
    - "-config.file=/etc/tempo/tempo.yaml"
  volumes:
    - ./tempo/tempo.yaml:/etc/tempo/tempo.yaml:ro
    - tempo_data:/tmp/tempo
  ports:
    - "3200:3200"
    - "4317:4317"
    - "4318:4318"
  networks:
    - tempo-network

grafana:
  image: grafana/grafana:latest
  container_name: grafana
  restart: unless-stopped
  environment:
    GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD: ${GRAFANA_PASSWORD}
  ports:
    - "3000:3000"
  depends_on:
    - tempo
  networks:
    - tempo-network

Quick Start

1# 1. Create the compose file
2cat > docker-compose.yml << 'EOF'
3services:
4  tempo:
5    image: grafana/tempo:latest
6    container_name: tempo
7    restart: unless-stopped
8    command:
9      - -config.file=/etc/tempo/tempo.yaml
10    volumes:
11      - ./tempo/tempo.yaml:/etc/tempo/tempo.yaml:ro
12      - tempo_data:/tmp/tempo
13    ports:
14      - "3200:3200"
15      - "4317:4317"
16      - "4318:4318"
17    networks:
18      - tempo-network
19
20  grafana:
21    image: grafana/grafana:latest
22    container_name: grafana
23    restart: unless-stopped
24    environment:
25      GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD: ${GRAFANA_PASSWORD}
26    ports:
27      - "3000:3000"
28    depends_on:
29      - tempo
30    networks:
31      - tempo-network
32
33volumes:
34  tempo_data:
35
36networks:
37  tempo-network:
38    driver: bridge
39EOF
40
41# 2. Create the .env file
42cat > .env << 'EOF'
43GRAFANA_PASSWORD=admin
44EOF
45
46# 3. Start the services
47docker compose up -d
48
49# 4. View logs
50docker compose logs -f

One-Liner

Run this command to download and set up the recipe in one step:

1curl -fsSL https://docker.recipes/api/recipes/grafana-tempo/run | bash

Troubleshooting