Configure Grafana Tempo's metrics-generator to produce service-graph and span metrics from ingested traces
domain: grafana.com · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
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Steps
In tempo.yaml, add a `metrics_generator:` block with a `processor:` section containing `service_graphs:` and `span_metrics:` sub-blocks to tune each processor (e.g. `service_graphs.histogram_buckets`, `service_graphs.dimensions`, `span_metrics.dimensions`, `span_metrics.intrinsic_dimensions`).
Configure `metrics_generator.storage.path` (WAL directory) and `metrics_generator.storage.remote_write` with a list of Prometheus remote_write-compatible endpoints (Prometheus, Grafana Mimir, or Thanos Receive) that generated metrics are pushed to.
Set `metrics_generator.registry.collection_interval` (default 15s) to control how often the generator collects and remote-writes its internal metric registry.
Explicitly enable the processors per tenant by setting `metrics_generator.processors` (e.g. `service-graphs`, `span-metrics`) in the tenant's `overrides` section — processors are disabled by default even if the `metrics_generator` block is configured.
Ensure the distributor/ingest pipeline feeding the metrics-generator is active, since the generator consumes trace data from the same pipeline Tempo uses for ingestion (Kafka-backed in current architecture).
In Grafana, add the remote-write target as a Prometheus/Mimir data source and, in the Tempo data source settings, enable the service graph / span-metrics linking to visualize the generated metrics.
Known gotchas
This is Tempo's own `metrics_generator` component with its own `processor.service_graphs` / `processor.span_metrics` config block inside tempo.yaml — it is a separate implementation from the OpenTelemetry Collector's `spanmetrics`/`servicegraph` connectors, which use entirely different YAML syntax; do not mix the two configuration formats.
Configuring the `metrics_generator` block alone does nothing — the processors must also be turned on per tenant via `metrics_generator.processors` in `overrides`, since they ship disabled by default.
As of Tempo 3.0 the `local-blocks` processor was removed; remove any `local-blocks` entries from `metrics_generator.processors` overrides, since recent-data TraceQL metrics queries are now handled by the live-store component instead.
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