Synthetic Monitoring with Grafana Cloud

Synthetic monitoring with Grafana Cloud empowers DevOps engineers and SREs to proactively simulate user journeys, ensuring application availability, performance, and reliability from global probe locations. Powered by Grafana k6, this black box monitoring solution goes beyond traditional metrics like CPU or memory, focusing on real-world user experiences such as API workflows and multi-step transactions.[1][2][5]

What is Synthetic Monitoring with Grafana Cloud?

Synthetic monitoring with Grafana Cloud is a fully managed service that emulates user behavior to test systems' availability, performance, and correctness. Unlike reactive monitoring, it runs scheduled checks from multiple global locations, simulating single-user iterations to detect issues before they impact end-users.[5] Key benefits include:

• Proactive detection of user-facing problems, like failed logins or slow checkouts.[2][3]
• Support for diverse check types: HTTP, Ping, DNS, TCP, Traceroute, MultiHTTP, Scripted, and Browser checks.[3][6]
• Integration with Grafana's ecosystem for dashboards, alerts, logs, traces, and metrics.[2]
• API and Terraform support for infrastructure-as-code workflows.[2][3]

Originally evolving from worldPing in 2015 and enhanced in 2020, synthetic monitoring with Grafana Cloud now leverages k6's high-performance JavaScript engine for complex scenarios, including WebSockets and gRPC protocols.[2]

Setting Up Synthetic Monitoring with Grafana Cloud

Getting started with synthetic monitoring with Grafana Cloud is straightforward, as it's pre-installed in all Grafana Cloud Stacks. Follow these steps:[1]

1. Log in to your Grafana Cloud instance.
2. Navigate to the left-side menu: Testing & synthetics > Synthetics.
3. Click Initialize the plugin.
4. Create your first check via the UI, API, or Terraform.

Once initialized, configure probes in global locations to run checks at predictable intervals, generating Prometheus-style metrics for alerting and visualization.[2][5]

Key Check Types in Synthetic Monitoring with Grafana Cloud

Synthetic monitoring with Grafana Cloud offers versatile check types to match your needs. Basic checks like HTTP, Ping, and DNS validate reachability and resolution, while advanced ones simulate full user journeys.[3][10]

MultiHTTP Checks

MultiHTTP checks chain HTTP requests, passing data between steps with assertions for validation. Ideal for workflows like login > create resource > delete resource > logout.[2]

Practical Example: Monitor a public API workflow using test-api.k6.io. In the Grafana UI, select MultiHTTP check, define steps, and add assertions like status code 200 or response time < 500ms.[2]

Scripted Checks

Scripted checks use k6 JavaScript for custom logic, custom metrics, and logs. They support complex assertions and are perfect for DevOps automation.[2][3]

import http from 'k6/http';
import { check, sleep } from 'k6';

export default function () {
  // Step 1: Login
  const loginRes = http.post('https://test-api.k6.io/auth/v1/token', {
    username: 'user',
    password: 'pass'
  });
  check(loginRes, { 'login status 200': (r) => r.status === 200 });

  // Step 2: Create crocodile (using extracted token)
  const token = loginRes.json('access_token');
  const createRes = http.post('https://test-api.k6.io/public/crocodiles/', {}, {
    headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${token}` },
  });
  const crocId = createRes.json('id');
  check(createRes, { 'create status 201': (r) => r.status === 201 });

  // Step 3: Delete crocodile
  const deleteRes = http.del(`https://test-api.k6.io/public/crocodiles/${crocId}`, null, {
    headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${token}` },
  });
  check(deleteRes, { 'delete status 204': (r) => r.status === 204 });

  sleep(1);
}

Paste this into a new Scripted check in Grafana Cloud. It simulates a full CRUD workflow, extracting the token and ID dynamically. Run every 5 minutes from multiple probes to track SLOs like 99% success rate.[2][3][7]

Browser Checks

For frontend-heavy apps, Browser checks use custom scripts or the recorder to mimic user interactions like browsing products and checkout. Grafana's recorder auto-generates k6 browser scripts.[6]

Practical Implementation: Monitoring an AWS Lambda API

Consider a real-world scenario: synthetic monitoring with Grafana Cloud for an AWS Lambda function exposing a crocodile API.[7] Deploy a Node.js Lambda:

const generateCrocodileData = () => ({
  id: Math.random().toString(36).substr(2, 9),
  name: 'Nile Crocodile', // Simplified from AI-generated species
  length: Math.floor(Math.random() * 5) + 3
});

export const handler = async () => {
  const numRecords = 8;
  const crocodiles = Array.from({ length: numRecords }, generateCrocodileData);
  return {
    statusCode: 200,
    body: JSON.stringify(crocodiles),
  };
};

Expose via API Gateway, then create an HTTP check in Grafana: Target the endpoint, assert response time < 200ms and JSON body length > 100. For multi-step, chain with Scripted to POST/DELETE.[7]

Visualize results on built-in dashboards showing state, reachability, latency, and error rates by location. Prebuilt alerts notify on failures via Alertmanager.[2][3]

Alerting and Visualization in Synthetic Monitoring with Grafana Cloud

Synthetic monitoring with Grafana Cloud auto-generates Prometheus metrics. Set up alerts for high latency or failures:

• SLO Tracking: Alert if check success < 99% over 5m.[2]
• Custom Rules: Use Grafana alerting UI or Terraform.
• Dashboards: Overview panels for check status, P50/P95 latency, and drill-down to logs/traces.[3]

Terraform Example: Provision checks as code.

resource "grafana_synthetic_check_scripted" "crocodile_workflow" {
  name     = "Crocodile API Workflow"
  script   = file("workflow.js")
  schedule = "*/5 * * * *"
  locations = ["us_east", "eu_west"]
}

Best Practices for SREs and DevOps

To maximize synthetic monitoring with Grafana Cloud:

• Start simple with HTTP checks, scale to Scripted/MultiHTTP for journeys.[2]
• Use global probes to catch regional issues.[5]
• Combine with logs/traces for root-cause analysis.[2]
• Integrate via API/Terraform for CI/CD.[3]
• Define assertions per step: status codes, timings, JSON paths.[2]
• Monitor from user locations, not just internal networks.[5]

This approach ensures reliable services, reducing MTTR and boosting user satisfaction.

Why Choose Synthetic Monitoring with Grafana Cloud?

For DevOps and SRE teams, synthetic monitoring with Grafana Cloud delivers actionable insights without manual setup hassles. Its k6 foundation handles complex workflows scalably, while Grafana integrations provide end-to-end observability. Implement today to simulate user journeys, meet SLOs, and stay ahead of outages.[1][2][5]

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