App Observability

Grafana Cloud Application Observability

Docs: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana-cloud/monitor-applications/

Three products that share the same OTLP + Mimir / Loki / Tempo / Pyroscope plumbing:

1. Application Observability — APM from OTel spanmetrics
2. Frontend Observability — Faro Web SDK, RUM + session replay
3. AI Observability — LLM / vector-DB monitoring via OpenLIT

Prerequisites

• Grafana Cloud stack + OTLP endpoint + numeric instance ID + API key with MetricsPublisher + LogsPublisher + TracesPublisher
• For APM: app instrumented with OTel SDK; for Frontend: a web app + Faro app key; for AI: Python ≥ 3.10
• Grafana Alloy as the local OTLP receiver (recommended)

Common Workflows

1. Stand up APM — Alloy receiver → Grafana Cloud + verify

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# 1. Set Cloud creds + start Alloy with config from references/apm.md
export GRAFANA_CLOUD_OTLP_ENDPOINT=https://otlp-gateway-prod-us-east-0.grafana.net/otlp
export GRAFANA_CLOUD_INSTANCE_ID=123456
export GRAFANA_CLOUD_API_KEY=glc_eyJ...
alloy fmt /etc/alloy/config.alloy   # syntax check
alloy run /etc/alloy/config.alloy

# 2. Verify Alloy is receiving + forwarding
curl -s http://localhost:12345/api/v0/web/components \
  | jq '.[] | select(.id|test("otelcol\\.exporter\\.otlphttp"))
        | {id, health:.health.state}'
# Expect health.state == "healthy"
curl -s http://localhost:12345/metrics \
  | grep -E 'otelcol_(receiver_accepted_spans|exporter_sent_spans)'

# 3. Point your app at Alloy (with required attributes!)
export OTEL_SERVICE_NAME="my-api"
export OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES="service.namespace=myteam,deployment.environment=production"
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4317
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=grpc

# 4. Verify spans landed in Tempo + spanmetrics generated
#    Tempo (TraceQL):  { resource.service.name = "my-api" }
#    Mimir (PromQL):   sum by (job) (rate(traces_spanmetrics_calls_total{service_name="my-api"}[5m]))
#    Expect > 0 within ~1 minute.

# 5. Verify it's wired to App Observability
#    Grafana → Application → Service Inventory: "my-api" should appear with RED metrics
#    Click into it → Service Map edges visible (requires span.kind on outbound calls)

Full Alloy block + required resource attributes + spanmetric names + correlation links: references/apm.md.

2. Instrument a React frontend with Faro

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# 1. Install
npm install @grafana/faro-react @grafana/faro-web-tracing

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// 2. initializeFaro with TracingInstrumentation + ReactIntegration (see references/faro.md)
//    Push a smoketest event so we have a known signal:
faro.api.pushEvent('faro_smoketest', { ts: Date.now().toString() });

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# 3. Verify in DevTools Network — POST to /collect returns 202
#    (401 → wrong app key; 404 → wrong url region)

# 4. Verify in Grafana Cloud
#    - Frontend Observability → your app → Sessions: your session appears
#    - LogQL on Loki: {kind="event"} |= "faro_smoketest"
#    - With TracingInstrumentation: open the session → the trace ID links to Tempo

Full React example, CDN setup, session config: references/faro.md.

3. Add AI / LLM observability

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pip install openlit==1.42.0

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# At app startup
import openlit
openlit.init(application_name="my-ai-app", environment="production")
# Your existing OpenAI / Anthropic / Cohere calls now emit OTel spans + metrics.

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# Env (same OTLP endpoint as APM)
export OTEL_SERVICE_NAME="my-ai-app"
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT="https://otlp-gateway-<region>.grafana.net/otlp"
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS="Authorization=Basic $(echo -n $ID:$KEY | base64)"

# Verify after a few LLM calls:
#   PromQL: sum by (gen_ai_request_model) (rate(gen_ai_usage_input_tokens_total[5m]))
#   Dashboard: Grafana → AI Observability → "GenAI Observability" auto-populates

Full OpenLIT install, evals/guards, GenAI metric list, dashboard names: references/ai-observability.md.

Full-stack correlation cheat sheet

Correlation keys: service.name joins all signals; trace exemplars embed trace IDs in metric points; traceID in logs and traceparent injected by Faro for FE → BE linking.

Troubleshooting

• Service missing from Service Inventory → missing service.namespace (job label) or deployment.environment resource attribute
• Service Map edges missing → span.kind not set on outbound calls (must be CLIENT) or inbound (SERVER)
• Faro /collect returns 401 → wrong app key; 404 → region in URL doesn't match the Faro app
• No GenAI metrics → confirm OpenLIT version matches OTel semantic-conv version expected by Cloud; verify auth with curl as in workflow #3

References

• references/apm.md — APM essentials: how RED metrics are generated, required OTel resource attributes, Alloy config, correlation links
• references/apm-setup.md — deep dive: full per-language OTel SDK setup (Node / Python / Java / Go), span-metrics options, complete Alloy config
• references/faro.md — Faro essentials: SDK init, instrumentations, session replay
• references/frontend-observability.md — deep dive: full Faro SDK reference, React/Vue/Angular integration, custom events, source maps
• references/ai-observability.md — OpenLIT auto-instrumentation for OpenAI / Anthropic / Bedrock / Vertex AI

Resources

• App Observability docs
• Frontend Observability docs
• Faro Web SDK
• AI Observability docs
• OpenLIT