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How to use custom variables in Grafana dashboards

Custom variables let you define your own options for dashboard viewers to select. They're a way to fine-tune how your dashboard behaves. In this video we'll look at how to use custom variables in your own dashboards. Grafana Cloud is the easiest way to get started with Grafana dashboards, metrics, logs, and traces. Our forever-free tier includes access to 10k metrics, 50GB logs, 50GB traces and more. We also have plans for every use case.

Executive Buy-In is Driving Observability Maturity: 2025 Observability Survey Results | Grafana Labs

In this video, CTO Tom Wilkie from Grafana Labs breaks down some of the most compelling findings from our third annual Observability Survey, based on over 1,200 industry responses. The big takeaway? Executive involvement is on the rise—and it’s accelerating adoption of advanced observability practices like distributed tracing, profiling, and SLOs. He also explores how SaaS adoption, the maturation of central observability teams, and new instrumentation methods like eBPF and Beyla are reshaping the observability landscape.

New Google Cloud Run Visualization in Grafana Cloud | Demo | How to Monitor Google Cloud Run

Perfect for troubleshooting, performance tuning, and cost optimization, this new feature helps you stay in control of your Cloud Run workloads. With this sophisticated dashboard, you can: Monitor CPU, memory, network traffic, and active requests at a glance Drill down into individual services and containers with a single click Identify resource usage spikes and optimize performance Use the Right-Sizing View to find the top resource-heavy services & containers.

Adaptive Metrics in Action: How The Trade Desk Optimized Observability Costs | Grafana Labs

Managing observability costs at scale is no easy task — especially when metrics volume grows fast. In this talk, Paul Givens, Head of Observability at The Trade Desk, shares how they implemented Adaptive Metrics to control costs without sacrificing visibility. How Adaptive Metrics works to reduce cardinality and cost Real-world implementation lessons from a high-scale AdTech environment Key takeaways for teams managing large Prometheus-like metric sets.

How to use data source variables in Grafana dashboards

Data source variables let you change where Grafana looks for data without having to create duplicate dashboards. So for example, if you have multiple different Prometheus databases, you can have one dashboard and use a data source variable to choose which Prometheus that dashboard uses. We'll look at how to set these up in this video. Grafana Cloud is the easiest way to get started with Grafana dashboards, metrics, logs, and traces. Our forever-free tier includes access to 10k metrics, 50GB logs, 50GB traces and more. We also have plans for every use case.

The Biggest Trends Shaping Observability in 2025: Highlights from Grafana Labs' Observability Survey

The Grafana Labs 3rd annual Observability Survey has landed and we're excited to launch a limited video series that breaks down the findings from over 1200 observability practitioners and leaders around the world. In this video, CTO Tom Wilkie breaks down the 4 biggest trends shaping observability in 2025 across open source, executive buy-in, AI, and cost vs. value. Stay tuned for more video explainers!