Setting Up Grafana Tempo via Docker

Introduction to Distributed Tracing & Grafana Tempo Part 1 DevOps Docs

📌 2. Setting Up Grafana Tempo (Development Environment)

We will install Grafana Tempo using Docker Compose, along with Grafana for visualization and OpenTelemetry Collector for trace ingestion.

1️⃣ Prerequisites

✅ Install Docker & Docker Compose

Verify installation:

docker -v
docker compose -v

✅ Install Grafana (Optional, but recommended)

2️⃣ Setting Up Docker Compose for Tempo

We will create a docker-compose.yaml file to run Tempo, OpenTelemetry Collector, and Grafana.

Step 1: Create a New Directory

mkdir grafana-tempo && cd grafana-tempo

Step 2: Create docker-compose.yaml

vim docker-compose.yml

📌 Paste the following configuration:

version: '3.7'

services:
  tempo:
    image: grafana/tempo:latest
    command: [ "-config.file=/etc/tempo.yml" ]
    volumes:
      - ./tempo-config.yml:/etc/tempo.yml
    ports:
      - "3200:3200"  # Tempo Query Port
      - "14268:14268"  # Jaeger ingest
      - "4317:4317"  # OTLP gRPC
      - "4318:4318"  # OTLP HTTP

  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana:latest
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      - GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD=admin
    depends_on:
      - tempo

  otel-collector:
    image: otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib:latest
    command: [ "--config=/etc/otel-collector-config.yml" ]
    volumes:
      - ./otel-collector-config.yml:/etc/otel-collector-config.yml
    ports:
      - "4319:4317"  # OTLP gRPC or just keep "4317" no host port mapping
      - "4320:4318"  # OTLP HTTP or just keep "4318" no host port mapping
      - "55680:55680"  # OpenTelemetry HTTP Debugging
    depends_on:
      - tempo

3️⃣ Create Tempo Configuration

Create a tempo-config.yml file for Tempo.

nano tempo-config.yml

📌 Paste the following configuration:

server:
  http_listen_port: 3200

distributor:
  receivers:
    jaeger:
      protocols:
        grpc:
        thrift_http:
    otlp:
      protocols:
        grpc:
        http:

storage:
  trace:
    backend: local
    local:
      path: /tmp/tempo/traces

Explanation:

  • http_listen_port: 3200 → Tempo API port.
  • Receivers → Accept traces via Jaeger & OpenTelemetry (OTLP).
  • Storage → Using local storage (/tmp/tempo/traces) for now.

4️⃣ Create OpenTelemetry Collector Configuration

Create a otel-collector-config.yml file.

nano otel-collector-config.yml

📌 Paste the following configuration:

receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      grpc:
      http:

exporters:
  otlp:
    endpoint: tempo:4317
    tls:
      insecure: true

service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      exporters: [otlp]

Explanation:

  • Receives traces using OTLP protocol.

  • Exports traces to Tempo at tempo:4317.

5️⃣ Start Tempo, Grafana & OTEL Collector Now, run Docker Compose:

docker compose up -d

This will start:

✅ Tempo (port 3200)

✅ Grafana (port 3000)

✅ OTEL Collector (host port 4317, 4318)

Check running containers:

docker ps

6️⃣ Verify Setup

🔹 Check Tempo Status

Open Grafana UI at 👉 http://localhost:3000

  • Login: username:- admin password: admin

  • Go to Configuration > Data Sources
  • Add Tempo as a data source
  • Set URL as http://tempo:3200
  • Click Save & Test

Now that Tempo is running, we need to generate traces.

✅ Let’s generate traces by instrumenting a sample python application. We’ll use OpenTelemetry (OTel) SDK to send traces to Tempo. 🚀