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1.1. Initialize your environment

Step 1: Create a free account and login to Grafana cloud​

Please register your self at grafana labs

  1. Go to this url register to grafana to register an account

  2. If you are presented with a choice of registration options. The easiest to use one of authentication providers. alt text

  3. Create your first stack, choose your stack URL for this workshop please use Singapore as your region alt text it might takes a while to create a new stack

  4. On the onboarding page, you can select I'm already familiar with Grafana Cloud and Skip setup

  5. Choose See all data connections

  6. Navigate to Observability -> Application alt text

  7. Activate Application Observability and click Connect data

  8. Select OpenTelemetry (OTLP) and follow step-by-step process

    • Choose your instrumentation method : OpenTelemetry SDK
    • Choose your language : Other
    • Choose your infrastructure : Linux
    • Choose your instrumentation method : Grafana Alloy
    • Create a Grafana Cloud access token : workshop-otel
    • Create token
    • ⚠️ Please copy the token to be used on the later steps
    • Scroll down under alloy config and copy otel path and user name
    • alt text

  9. Right now you will have three information, ⚠️ keep this information when configure the alloy on the next steps

    • GRAFANA_CLOUD_OTLP_ENDPOINT = "The url endpoint"
    • GRAFANA_CLOUD_OTLP_USERNAME = "The username"
    • GRAFANA_CLOUD_OTLP_PASSWORD = "The token"

Step 2: Log in to your github account​

  1. Log in to your GitHub account.

  2. Go to https://github.com/hendritjipto/opentelemetry-workshop.

  3. Click Code and then select Codespaces to launch a new codespace for this repository.

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  1. Change the theme to suit your preference: click on the Command Palette icon located in the top right:

    • Then type theme to find the Theme command in the list.

    • Then, select a theme of your choice. Light? Dark? Whatever you prefer!

Step 3: Run the demo app​

In this first lab, we'll be working with demo application called Rolldice.

Let's test out this app:

  1. Launch a new Terminal by going to Terminal -> New Terminal

  2. In the terminal, run the following command to copy the first project into your persistent workspace:

    cd ./source/rolldice/

  3. Then, run the following commands to start the application:

    ./run.sh

    The application starts.

  4. Create a second terminal, either using the split terminal icon (located at the right edge of the tab bar where "Terminal 1" is located), or by going to Terminal -> New Terminal.

  5. In the second terminal, use curl to make a sample request to the rolldice service:

    curl localhost:8080/rolldice

    The rolldice service returns a random number.

  6. Change back to the first terminal by clicking on its tab, then press Ctrl+C to stop the application.

Summary​

You've just run the demo application that we'll use in this lab. However, the application is rather isolated, and so far un-observed!

In the next lab, we'll add OpenTelemetry instrumentation to the app, and begin shipping telemetry signals to Grafana Cloud.

Click on the next module below to proceed.