Grafana Assistant is an AI-powered tool now available in public preview for Grafana Cloud users, designed to streamline the onboarding process for teams using the platform. It aids users in learning observability concepts, comparing features from different tools, and providing context-aware answers to enhance their experience. By offering tailored guidance and interactive tutorials, Grafana Assistant aims to help users quickly and effectively adopt Grafana for their observability needs.

Grafana 12.1 introduces several new features aimed at enhancing user experience and operational efficiency, including automated health checks via Grafana Advisor, a redesigned alert rule management interface, and improved data visualization tools such as trendlines and custom variable support. Additional updates focus on authentication enhancements and new data source integrations, ensuring better security and flexibility for users.

Choosing between single-tenant and multi-tenant architectures in Grafana Cloud involves weighing the benefits of simplicity and centralized management against the need for data isolation and customization. A single-stack approach is generally recommended for operational efficiency, while multiple stacks may be better for organizations requiring strict data segregation and compliance. Understanding the trade-offs can help organizations select the best architectural model for their needs.

Grafana Alloy, the OpenTelemetry Collector distribution launched a year ago, has seen significant adoption and development, now supporting over 525,000 active instances. The article highlights Alloy's unique capabilities, including native pipelines for both OpenTelemetry and Prometheus, live debugging features, and Fleet Management for centralized control in Grafana Cloud. Future enhancements are focused on aligning with OpenTelemetry standards and improving user experience for debugging and configuration.

Grafana Labs has released critical security updates for the Grafana Image Renderer plugin and Synthetic Monitoring Agent to address four significant vulnerabilities in Chromium that could lead to remote code execution and memory corruption. Users are urged to update to the latest versions promptly to mitigate potential risks. Grafana Cloud instances have already been patched, alleviating the need for action from users of the managed service.

Grafana Labs is inviting participants to take part in their fourth annual Observability Survey, aimed at understanding the current state of observability in the industry. The survey will explore topics such as AI's role, open standards, and community satisfaction, with participants having a chance to win swag as a thank you for their input. Results will be shared transparently, allowing for community interaction with the data.

Grafana Tempo 2.8 has been released, featuring significant memory improvements, new TraceQL functionalities, and several breaking changes. Key updates include enhanced query capabilities, performance optimizations related to compactor memory usage, and the removal of deprecated serverless features. The release aims to improve user experience and ensure better performance under high traffic conditions.

Grafana has updated its Prometheus data source to better align with specific cloud services, deprecating AWS and Microsoft Azure authentication in favor of dedicated plugins for Amazon and Azure. This move reflects Grafana's commitment to a "big tent" philosophy, emphasizing interoperability and tailored solutions for diverse observability tools while continuing to support the open-source community.

Grafana 12 introduces a new feature that allows users to import Prometheus-style alerts and recording rules into Grafana-managed alerts directly through the UI, streamlining the migration process without the need to rewrite existing rules. This functionality enhances compatibility with existing workflows and provides access to Grafana's additional alerting features while preserving the original behavior of Prometheus alerts. Users can easily manage and control the import process, making it easier to transition to Grafana's alerting system.

Grafana Play, a free sandbox environment for exploring Grafana, has implemented privacy policies by removing over 21,000 inactive user accounts and deprecated broken dashboards. Using Grafana k6 and scripts, the team efficiently identified and cleaned up these issues to enhance user privacy and dashboard quality, ensuring a better experience for active users.

The Anthropic integration for Grafana Cloud allows users to monitor Claude large language model usage and costs by connecting directly to the Anthropic Usage and Cost API. This integration offers real-time insights, pre-built dashboards, customizable alerts, and no need for additional collectors, enabling organizations to optimize performance and manage expenses effectively.

Grafana Cloud Traces now supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP), enabling users to leverage LLM-powered tools like Claude Code for enhanced analysis of tracing data. This integration simplifies the exploration of service interactions and helps in diagnosing issues by providing actionable insights from distributed tracing data. A step-by-step guide is included for connecting Claude Code to Grafana Cloud Traces.

Grafana has released version 1.0 of the k6 Operator, a tool designed to simplify distributed performance testing within Kubernetes environments. This release includes bug fixes, improved Helm chart configurations, and a commitment to regular maintenance updates and predictable release schedules, enhancing usability while maintaining security and performance.

Grafana has launched a redesigned alert rules list page that enhances the user experience for managing alerts with improved performance, clarity, and usability. This update introduces two distinct views—grouped and list—for better navigation and quicker access to rules, while addressing previous performance bottlenecks through a new paginated API. Future improvements will focus on enhancing alert triaging capabilities.

Grafana Labs has introduced new data sources to enhance its observability platform, allowing users to visualize and analyze data from various applications and databases, including Amazon Aurora, Zendesk, and Azure CosmosDB. These updates, showcased at GrafanaCON 2025, aim to unify data querying and visualization from disparate systems within a centralized Grafana dashboard.

Learn how to create a real-time aircraft tracking dashboard using Grafana and data from an ADS-B receiver. The article outlines the necessary hardware, software setup, and steps to visualize flight data on a dynamic map, making it accessible for enthusiasts looking to track planes overhead.

Grafana Mimir has introduced the Mimir Query Engine (MQE) to improve memory efficiency and performance compared to the traditional PromQL engine. Launched with Grafana Mimir 2.17, MQE processes queries in a streaming manner, significantly reducing peak memory utilization and execution time while maintaining compatibility with existing PromQL features. The new engine also underwent rigorous correctness testing to ensure accurate results.

Goutham Veeramachaneni discusses how Beyla, an open-source eBPF-based instrumentation tool, simplifies monitoring in homelabs by providing consistent observability across diverse applications without requiring extensive manual coding. By leveraging eBPF and OpenTelemetry, Beyla enables users to collect telemetry data effortlessly, making it easier to address challenges in observability for both personal and production environments.

The Infinity data source for Grafana has received significant updates, including support for the widely-used JQ parser, additional HTTP methods (PATCH, PUT, DELETE), and enhanced flexibility with OAuth2 token customization and metadata handling. These improvements aim to boost performance and compatibility, making it easier for users to interact with various APIs and visualize data effectively. Users are encouraged to upgrade to the latest version to benefit from these features.

Grafana Metrics Drilldown has introduced new features including a sidebar menu for filtering, grouping by labels, and enhanced sorting options to improve the user experience in navigating Prometheus-compatible metrics. These updates aim to streamline the process of identifying and analyzing key metrics, making it easier for users to manage large datasets and quickly pinpoint relevant information. Users can explore these features through a demo and access further documentation.

Organizations can enhance their cloud network management by using AWS Transit Gateway Flow Logs and Amazon Managed Grafana for centralized monitoring and visualization. This setup allows users to analyze traffic patterns, troubleshoot issues, and ensure compliance through detailed insights into network traffic stored in Amazon S3. The article provides a step-by-step guide for deploying a Grafana dashboard to visualize these logs effectively.

Grafana Beyla, an open source eBPF-based auto-instrumentation tool, can be integrated with Amazon ECS to enhance application observability without modifying application code. The article details the configuration steps necessary to run Beyla as a sidecar in ECS tasks, specifically leveraging Grafana Alloy for telemetry data management, enabling deep visibility into containerized workloads.

Grafana Beyla 2.5 introduces significant updates built on OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation, including support for MongoDB protocols, JSON-RPC for Go applications, manual span capabilities, enhanced NodeJS distributed tracing, and a new survey mode for service discovery. These features aim to improve observability and maintain compatibility within the OpenTelemetry ecosystem while allowing community contributions.

Grafana Mimir can be effectively deployed on bare metal or virtual machines instead of Kubernetes, especially when Kubernetes is unavailable or to avoid circular dependencies in metrics management. Additionally, running Mimir outside of Kubernetes can provide valuable learning experiences about the software. Factors such as resource allocation, flexibility, and management complexity should be considered when choosing the deployment method.

Grafana Labs has introduced a new filtering system for alert rules that enhances user experience by providing more filtering options, a cleaner UI, and reduced cognitive load. This update allows users to easily find alert rules using dropdowns for criteria such as Namespace, Label, Evaluation group, and Rule Source, while maintaining existing functionality for manual searches. The new feature is being rolled out in Grafana Cloud and will be available in the Grafana 12.3 release this October.

Tiger teams at Grafana Labs were established to address urgent, cross-functional challenges, improving processes that previously caused delays in releases. These temporary, focused teams draw on specialized expertise to tackle specific issues, enhancing efficiency and clarity in problem-solving. The experience shared highlights best practices for running effective tiger teams and their potential impact on organizational challenges.

Grafana Assistant, recently released in public preview, enhances the efficiency of developers and users by simplifying query writing, log interpretation, and dashboard creation within Grafana Cloud. It offers contextual assistance and automates repetitive tasks, significantly reducing the time spent on debugging and onboarding processes. This integrated chat agent aims to streamline observability workflows and improve overall productivity.

Grafana Labs has donated its open-source eBPF-based instrumentation tool, Beyla, to the OpenTelemetry project to enhance application-level telemetry without the need for recompilation. This move aims to fill gaps in existing OpenTelemetry tooling and foster community ownership, enabling further innovation in zero-code instrumentation. Beyla will continue to exist as a Grafana-specific distribution while aligning with the upstream OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation project.

Learn how to utilize OpenTelemetry tracing through an interactive grand strategy game called Game of Traces, designed to help engineers grasp observability concepts. Players capture villages and manage resources while tracking interactions between services, showcasing how traces reveal the state of operations within a microservice architecture. The game leverages the Grafana LGTM Stack to illustrate telemetry signals in action.

Learn how to monitor your Prusa 3D printer using Grafana by leveraging prusa_exporter and Prometheus to visualize printer metrics and set alerts. This setup allows for efficient offline monitoring, even in environments with network restrictions, and offers customization for both hobbyists and developers. The article also discusses challenges in data processing due to the limited resources of embedded systems.

Grafana k6 browser is evolving to enhance its compatibility with Playwright while focusing on frontend performance and synthetics testing. The article outlines the similarities and differences between the two, highlights the advantages of k6's streamlined approach, and discusses future developments aimed at simplifying frontend testing for a broader audience.

Grafana is implementing a release freeze from November 26 to December 2 and again from December 19 to January 5 to ensure stability during the holiday season. During these periods, there will be no scheduled updates for Grafana Cloud, Grafana Enterprise, or Grafana OSS, although operational or security changes will still occur. Additionally, Grafana Cloud offers various rolling release channels—Fast, Steady, and Slow—to cater to different user preferences for updates.

Grafana Traces Drilldown is now generally available, offering a queryless experience for tracing data that enables faster root-cause analysis in microservices environments. With features like seamless navigation between metrics and traces, built-in investigative tools, and real-time analysis capabilities, it streamlines the process for incident responders and developers to quickly identify and resolve issues. Recent updates include integrated exemplars and TraceQL streaming for improved user experience and efficiency.

The article discusses the author's experience with self-hosting various applications, including an RSS reader (Miniflux), Grafana for data visualization, and a bookmark manager (Linkding). The author shares insights on setting up these applications using Docker, managing configurations with Ansible, and the challenges of maintaining a self-hosted environment. Future ideas include integrating AI with user manuals for household appliances.