Deploy and register a Grafana Cloud Synthetic Monitoring private probe (synthetic-monitoring-agent) via Docker or Kubernetes so synthetic checks can run from within a private network

Steps

1. In Grafana Cloud, with the Admin role, go to Testing & synthetics > Synthetics > Probes > Add Private Probe; enter a Probe Name, Latitude/Longitude, a Region (defaults AMER/EMEA/APAC, or a custom value), optional labels, click Save, then copy the generated Probe Authentication Token.
2. Look up the correct Probe API Server URL (and matching backend/secrets-proxy addresses) for your stack's region on the Synthetic Monitoring Config page under 'backend address'; the API server URL must be entered without the https:// scheme.
3. To deploy via Docker: docker pull grafana/synthetic-monitoring-agent (use the -browser tagged image if you need k6 browser checks), export API_TOKEN=<PROBE_TOKEN> and API_SERVER=<PROBE_API_SERVER_URL>, then run: docker run grafana/synthetic-monitoring-agent --api-server-address=${API_SERVER} --api-token=${API_TOKEN} --verbose=true.
4. To deploy via Kubernetes: fetch the example namespace.yaml, secret.yaml, and deployment.yaml from github.com/grafana/synthetic-monitoring-agent (examples/kubernetes), put the Probe Authentication Token into secret.yaml and the region's Probe API Server URL into deployment.yaml, then kubectl apply -f namespace.yaml, secret.yaml, and deployment.yaml in order.
5. Open outbound firewall access from the probe host/pod to the region's API server URL and secrets-proxy address, plus the stack's Prometheus and Loki connection URLs, so the probe can register with Grafana Cloud and ship results.
6. Confirm registration by checking that the new probe shows as online on the Synthetics > Probes page in Grafana Cloud, then attach checks to it.