Grafana

Grafana displays data stored in systems such as Prometheus, Loki and Tempo in a single interface. It does not store metrics, logs or traces: it queries each source and represents its response.

From data to panel

A panel stores three decisions: which source to query, which question to ask and how to display the response. When someone opens a dashboard, Grafana runs the query and draws the result as a chart, table or value.

Units, legends, colors and thresholds help interpret the data, but do not modify it. The same response can be displayed in several ways without changing what Prometheus, Loki or Tempo returned.

data source -> query -> response -> visualization

Connecting the signals

Grafana also lets you move from one signal to another. If a Prometheus panel shows that failures have increased, a link can open the logs for the same service and time range in Loki. From a log with trace_id="7ac...", another link can open the trace for report-482 in Tempo.

metric -> logs for the period -> specific trace

For those links to work, signals must share service names, environments and identifiers. Grafana can represent and connect the available information, but it cannot relate data that use different contexts.

Dashboards monitor recurring questions, Explore supports free-form investigation, and alerts notify someone when a query meets a condition.