We consistently roll out helpful updates and fun features in Grafana Cloud, our fully managed observability platform powered by the open source Grafana LGTM Stack (Loki for logs, Grafana for visualization, Tempo for traces, and Mimir for metrics).
In case you missed them, here’s our monthly round-up of the latest and greatest Grafana Cloud updates. You can also read about all the features we add to Grafana Cloud in our What’s New in Grafana Cloud documentation.
And if you’re not a Grafana Cloud user yet, sign up for an account today! You can try any of these features (and more) for free with our generous Cloud Free plan.
New features in Grafana Cloud k6
We’ve added a couple new features to Grafana Cloud k6, our fully managed performance testing platform powered by k6 OSS, that make it even easier to run performance tests within your CI/CD pipelines and help you expand on core functionality via extensions.
Test run summaries in GitHub Actions
When executing tests in Grafana Cloud k6 from a GitHub Actions workflow, the pull request comments will now automatically display a rich test summary. These summaries include key performance metrics like response times, request rates, pass/fail statuses, and comparison with the baseline test runs, providing you with instant, actionable insights directly within your development workflow.
This feature is now generally available. To learn more about our GitHub Actions integration for k6, please refer to our technical docs.
Support for k6 extensions
This month, we are announcing a public preview of k6 extensions in Grafana Cloud k6.
k6 extensions are libraries that help you expand core k6 functionality. For example, the faker k6 extension enables you to generate random fake data in your tests, while the SSH extension lets you use SSH connections.
You can now seamlessly import and use a pre-approved set of k6 extensions in your Grafana Cloud k6 tests. We also display the versions of k6 and extensions that your test runs are using, with links that take you to the source code, to help you debug issues faster.
Please refer to our docs to learn more about how to leverage this feature.
Enhancements to Frontend Observability
Geolocation Insights
Frontend applications often serve a globally distributed user base, meaning your end users can be spread across multiple geographical regions and access your application from diverse locations. In some instances, a user’s location can also affect the performance of web applications.
This is why we recently launched Geolocation Insights in Frontend Observability, a new feature that helps you determine the approximate location of your end users and understand if your app experiences a performance degradation due to user location. You can filter, segment, and analyze frontend telemetry based on location data to optimize web performance, localize content, and tailor end-user experiences.
Resource management via Terraform
Also new this month, you can now configure a Terraform provider to connect to the Frontend Observability API and manage resources, such as applications. Learn more in our docs.
RBAC support
Role-based access control (RBAC) in Frontend Observability is now generally available, providing a standardized way to grant, change, and revoke access related to viewing and modifying Grafana resources, such as dashboards and. Note: Frontend Observability RBAC only includes a set of basic roles and not fine-grained access.
To learn more, please visit our technical docs.
Pipelines history in Fleet Management
Fleet Management — a Grafana Cloud feature that enables you to manage collector deployments at scale — now offers an audit trail of configuration pipeline changes, allowing your team to collaborate more efficiently, ensure audit compliance, and troubleshoot issues caused by configuration changes.
With the Pipelines history feature, now generally available, you can view all changes across all pipelines, review changes to a specific pipeline, compare differences between change events for a pipeline, or copy configuration syntax to revert to an earlier version of a pipeline.
You can read more about this feature in our Fleet Management documentation.
Kubernetes Monitoring updates
Our Kubernetes Monitoring solution in Grafana Cloud enables you to visualize and alert on your Kubernetes cluster so you can identify root causes, optimize resource usage, and reduce costs. This month, we’ve added new features to streamline debugging and alerting.
Debug Metrics
With our new Debug Metrics feature, it’s easier and faster than ever to determine why one of your Kubernetes Monitoring panels is showing inaccurate (or no) data.
You can quickly discover whether all the required metrics that power your panel are available and properly labeled, and also easily learn more about which data, in general, is driving any panel.
Ultimately, with Debug Metrics, you have:
- Faster issue detection when data looks off
- Immediate insights to restore accuracy
- More confidence in your data-driven decisions
Please check out our Kubernetes Monitoring troubleshooting documentation to learn more.
Filtering by alert name
The Alerts page in Kubernetes Monitoring displays all alerts related exclusively to your Kubernetes infrastructure and any applications within it. In addition to filtering by cluster, namespace, and severity, you can also now filter by alert name to quickly find the information you need and reduce MTTR.
To read more about the Alerts page, please visit our documentation.
More granular log management with Pause Adaptive Logs
Adaptive Logs is a feature in Grafana Cloud that uses AI/ML techniques to analyze observability data at scale and identify commonly ingested log patterns. From there, it creates customized recommendations for dropping unused telemetry, allowing you to reduce observability costs and focus on the signals that truly matter.
Earlier this year, we introduced Exemptions, a feature to help you further customize your log management experience by proactively preserving critical data and excluding certain metrics from aggregations.
This month, we’re introducing another feature to tailor your logging experience: Pause Adaptive Logs, which lets end users of logs temporarily ingest the logs they need for the service, application, or cluster they care about, without needing to configure anything or work with their centralized team.
With Pause Adaptive Logs, you get all the cost savings benefits of Adaptive Logs, while still ensuring your development teams have the log lines they need during an incident or when deploying a new service.
Pause Adaptive Logs is now in public preview. For more information, please visit our documentation.
New alerting options in Synthetic Monitoring
We’re excited to announce the private preview release of new alerting capabilities for Grafana Cloud Synthetic Monitoring.
First, you can now create alerts for each check in your Synthetic Monitoring application. For example, you can create an alert based on the number of check failures in a specific time window, with different settings for each one of your checks.
In addition to failed checks, you can also create an alert if a TLS certificate is set to expire within a certain number of days.
Per-check alert rules give you more granular control over your alerting needs, and make it easier to configure the right alert threshold depending on the services you’re monitoring and the check settings. Default alert rules based on sensitivity thresholds can still be used in combination with per-check alert rules.
To learn more, refer to the per-check alerts docs.
Updates to the Grafana IRM mobile app
We continue adding more functionality to the Grafana IRM mobile app to make incident management smoother and more flexible – even on the go.
Editing incident details
We’ve officially shipped a big update to our IRM mobile app that many of you have been asking for: the ability to edit incidents directly from your phone!
No more rushing back to your laptop when you notice a typo in an incident title or need to update a severity level. Instead, simply open the IRM mobile app, navigate to the incident, and make your changes on the spot.
With this feature, you can:
- Fix that embarrassing typo in your incident title or description
- Update the status as the situation evolves
- Change severity when you realize it’s worse (or better) than you thought
- Add or remove labels from the incident
Managing incident roles
Also new this month in the Grafana IRM mobile app is the ability to manage incident roles directly from your phone. More specifically, it’s now possible to:
- Quickly assign and reassign roles by searching and selecting users
- Easily un-assign users from roles when they’re no longer needed
- Jump straight into Slack to message an assigned user
To use these new features, which are now generally available, simply download the latest version of the IRM mobile app from the App Store or Google Play.
Advancements in machine learning
Support for Anthropic models in the LLM plugin
The LLM plugin is Grafana’s access point for GenAI features within Grafana, helping to enable AI-powered flame graph interpretation, incident auto-summary, dashboard panel title generation, and other powerful features.
Alongside existing support for OpenAI API and OpenAI-compatible APIs, along with custom APIs, we also now support the usage of the Anthropic API.
To learn more about the LLM plugin, please refer to our docs.
RBAC for dynamic alerting
Dynamic alerting with our forecasting and outlier detection features now supports role-based access control, allowing you to use RBAC permissions to control which users can view, create, edit, and delete dynamic alerting forecasts and outlier detectors.
The four specific roles include:
ML Editors:
- Create/edit/delete forecasts and outlier detectors
- Create/edit/delete holidays
ML Viewers:
- View forecasts and outlier detectors
Sift Editors:
- Start investigations
- Edit configurations
Sift Viewers:
- View investigations
This feature is currently in public preview. You can read more in our documentation.
Infinity data source: new capabilities
The Infinity data source plugin for Grafana allows you to seamlessly query and visualize data from JSON, CSV, XML, and GraphQL endpoints. This month, we’re sharing a number of new features, all generally available, that make this popular data source even more robust.
Support for additional HTTP methods
The Infinity data source now supports additional HTTP methods — PATCH, PUT, and DELETE — through the allowDangerousHTTPMethods configuration. This improvement gives you greater flexibility when interacting with APIs that require these methods, making it easier to work with a wider range of use cases.
Note: Since these methods can perform destructive actions, they are disabled by default. To enable this feature, toggle allowDangerousHTTPMethods in your data source configuration.
Support for gzip compression for outgoing requests
The Infinity data source also now supports gzip compression for outgoing requests by default, improving data transfer efficiency and dashboard performance. This enhancement reduces payload size, helping users working with large data sets or real-time dashboards experience faster load times and lower network strain.
Previously, adding gzip manually as a request header caused parsing issues. With this update, requests automatically include the Accept-Encoding: gzip header, ensuring smoother data retrieval and visualization.
Defaulting to the backend parser
The Infinity data source now defaults to the backend parser when creating new queries in dashboards or Explore. Previously, the frontend parser was the default, limiting access to backend features like alerts, recorded queries, and public dashboards. This update improves compatibility with Grafana’s backend features from the start.
Existing queries using the frontend parser will continue to work as before. If any issues arise, we recommend switching the parser to Frontend in your query settings.
Passing Grafana metadata to APIs
Lastly, the Infinity data source plugin now allows passing Grafana metadata, such as user ID and data source UID, to underlying APIs as headers or query parameters. This gives data source admins more control over how metadata is shared with external APIs.
Admins can configure these settings at the data source level, ensuring that metadata is passed consistently while preventing users from overriding values in individual queries. Since different APIs require metadata in different formats, this feature offers flexibility in how values are forwarded.
You can learn more about these and other features of the Infinity data sources in our technical docs.
Cross-region connectivity support for AWS PrivateLink
Grafana Cloud now supports native cross-region connectivity using AWS PrivateLink. This feature, now generally available, allows you to connect directly to Grafana Cloud endpoint services hosted in other AWS Regions over PrivateLink endpoints. To read more, please visit our docs.
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