DevOps.com

  • Latest
    • Articles
    • Features
    • Most Read
    • News
    • News Releases
  • Topics
    • AI
    • Continuous Delivery
    • Continuous Testing
    • Cloud
    • Culture
    • DataOps
    • DevSecOps
    • Enterprise DevOps
    • Leadership Suite
    • DevOps Practice
    • ROELBOB
    • DevOps Toolbox
    • IT as Code
  • Videos/Podcasts
    • Techstrong.tv Podcast
    • Techstrong.tv - Twitch
    • DevOps Unbound
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming
    • Calendar View
    • On-Demand Webinars
  • Library
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Calendar View
    • On-Demand Events
  • Sponsored Content
  • Related Sites
    • Techstrong Group
    • Cloud Native Now
    • Security Boulevard
    • Techstrong Research
    • DevOps Chat
    • DevOps Dozen
    • DevOps TV
    • Techstrong TV
    • Techstrong.tv Podcast
    • Techstrong.tv - Twitch
  • Media Kit
  • About
  • Sponsor
  • AI
  • Cloud
  • CI/CD
  • Continuous Testing
  • DataOps
  • DevSecOps
  • DevOps Onramp
  • Platform Engineering
  • Sustainability
  • Low-Code/No-Code
  • IT as Code
  • More
    • Application Performance Management/Monitoring
    • Culture
    • Enterprise DevOps
    • ROELBOB
Hot Topics
  • Chronosphere Adds Professional Services to Jumpstart Observability
  • Friend or Foe? ChatGPT's Impact on Open Source Software
  • VMware Streamlines IT Management via Cloud Foundation Update
  • Revolutionizing the Nine Pillars of DevOps With AI-Engineered Tools
  • No, Dev Jobs Aren’t Dead: AI Means ‘Everyone’s a Programmer’? ¦ Interesting Intel VPUs

Home » Blogs » Application Performance Management/Monitoring » Grafana Labs Update Aims to Simplify Observability

Grafana Labs Update Aims to Simplify Observability

Avatar photoBy: Mike Vizard on May 18, 2020 2 Comments

Grafana Labs today released an update to the open source Grafana project that adds a viewer that simplifies tracking the path of a single request through a distributed system.

Recent Posts By Mike Vizard
  • Chronosphere Adds Professional Services to Jumpstart Observability
  • VMware Streamlines IT Management via Cloud Foundation Update
  • Logz.io Taps AI to Surface Incident Response Recommendations
Avatar photo More from Mike Vizard
Related Posts
  • Grafana Labs Update Aims to Simplify Observability
  • Grafana Labs Aligns with Elastic on Observability
  • Grafana Labs Adds On-Premises Observability Platform
    Related Categories
  • Application Performance Management/Monitoring
  • Blogs
    Related Topics
  • application observability
  • data
  • devops
  • observability
  • open source
Show more
Show less

Version 7.0 also adds a plug-in for Amazon CloudWatch Logs along with support for Apache Arrow, a unified data and plugin framework that promises to make it easier to build plug-ins for the analytics and monitoring tools that are widely employed in DevOps environments to provide observability.

The latest release also adds a range of automatic rendering options for a variety of formats, including tables and non-time-series charts alongside panel plugins for maps, pie charts and gauges.

Ryan McKinley, vice president of applications for Grafana Labs, said Grafana has gained traction in DevOps environments in part because it makes it easier to query and analyze multiple types of data without having to pull it all into a central repository. All queries are launched against data wherever it resides, he said, noting by chaining a set of simple point-and-click transformations, users will be able to join, filter, rename and calculate all in the same platform.

That approach makes it easier for DevOps teams to set up observability platforms using any mix of tools and services without much help from internal IT operations teams. That approach is now also starting to gain traction outside of DevOps environments as business analysts look for easier ways to also analyze data from different classes of applications, McKinley added.

While observability has always been considered a core tenet of DevOps, achieving it has been challenging for most organizations. Simply setting up all the underlying platforms required has proven too challenging for many IT teams. Grafana has emerged as a tool that enables DevOps teams to visualize relevant data within the context of a custom-built observability platform.

It’s not clear to what degree Grafana might emerge as a de facto standard. However, during an economic downturn, it’s not uncommon for IT organizations to rely more on open source tools to reduce costs. Rather than having to lay off an analyst or developer, many organizations will first look to reduce their reliance on commercial software licenses. Many of those same organizations have been wrestling for years with a fragmented approach to analytics software that often can yield conflicting insights.

McKinley said one of the benefits of Grafana is that it reduces the cost of developing different models that enable organizations to explore different potential scenarios. Too often organizations are wedded to specific models that might not reliably reflect a new business trend simply because the cost of creating a new model is too high or takes too much time.

Whatever the analytics path forward, the one thing that is clear is that as IT continues to become more complex thanks in part to the rise of microservices, DevOps teams will no longer be able to function without some form of observability platform being readily accessible. The only real question now is how best to go about building and maintaining that observability platform.

Filed Under: Application Performance Management/Monitoring, Blogs Tagged With: application observability, data, devops, observability, open source

« GigaSpaces InsightEdge AnalyticsXtreme Wins the Gold in Stevie 2020 American Business Awards
Cloud-Native Security and Performance: Two Sides of the Same Coin »

Techstrong TV – Live

Click full-screen to enable volume control
Watch latest episodes and shows

Upcoming Webinars

Securing Your Software Supply Chain with JFrog and AWS
Tuesday, June 6, 2023 - 1:00 pm EDT
Maximize IT Operations Observability with IBM i Within Splunk
Wednesday, June 7, 2023 - 1:00 pm EDT
Secure Your Container Workloads in Build-Time with Snyk and AWS
Wednesday, June 7, 2023 - 3:00 pm EDT

GET THE TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK

Sponsored Content

PlatformCon 2023: This Year’s Hottest Platform Engineering Event

May 30, 2023 | Karolina Junčytė

The Google Cloud DevOps Awards: Apply Now!

January 10, 2023 | Brenna Washington

Codenotary Extends Dynamic SBOM Reach to Serverless Computing Platforms

December 9, 2022 | Mike Vizard

Why a Low-Code Platform Should Have Pro-Code Capabilities

March 24, 2021 | Andrew Manby

AWS Well-Architected Framework Elevates Agility

December 17, 2020 | JT Giri

Latest from DevOps.com

Chronosphere Adds Professional Services to Jumpstart Observability
June 2, 2023 | Mike Vizard
Friend or Foe? ChatGPT’s Impact on Open Source Software
June 2, 2023 | Javier Perez
VMware Streamlines IT Management via Cloud Foundation Update
June 2, 2023 | Mike Vizard
Revolutionizing the Nine Pillars of DevOps With AI-Engineered Tools
June 2, 2023 | Marc Hornbeek
No, Dev Jobs Aren’t Dead: AI Means ‘Everyone’s a Programmer’? ¦ Interesting Intel VPUs
June 1, 2023 | Richi Jennings

TSTV Podcast

On-Demand Webinars

DevOps.com Webinar ReplaysDevOps.com Webinar Replays

Most Read on DevOps.com

What Is a Cloud Operations Engineer?
May 30, 2023 | Gilad David Maayan
Forget Change, Embrace Stability
May 31, 2023 | Don Macvittie
No, Dev Jobs Aren’t Dead: AI Means ‘Everyone’s a Programmer’? ¦ Interesting Intel VPUs
June 1, 2023 | Richi Jennings
Five Great DevOps Job Opportunities
May 30, 2023 | Mike Vizard
Checkmarx Brings Generative AI to SAST and IaC Security Tools
May 31, 2023 | Mike Vizard
  • Home
  • About DevOps.com
  • Meet our Authors
  • Write for DevOps.com
  • Media Kit
  • Sponsor Info
  • Copyright
  • TOS
  • Privacy Policy

Powered by Techstrong Group, Inc.

© 2023 ·Techstrong Group, Inc.All rights reserved.