Implementing Observability in Phoenix Applications with Grafana

Theron's article provides a comprehensive guide on setting up observability for Phoenix applications, utilizing the Grafana stack—comprising Loki for logging, Mimir for metrics, and Tempo for tracing. The implementation is done using Docker Compose and is structured to be easily adaptable for production environments. The article walks the reader through configuring each component step-by-step, from creating the necessary Docker compose and configuration files to integrating with the Phoenix application. Metrics are collected using PromEx and the OpenTelemetry Collector (OTel), while logs are managed through log rotation handled by Erlang and sent to Grafana Loki via Promtail. Traces are set up with the help of a variety of OpenTelemetry libraries and are sent to Grafana Tempo. The guide concludes with instructions on how to get the logging information visible in Grafana and invites readers to reach out on the forum for further discussion.