Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Grafana 11.6 release: new data visualization features, LBAC for metrics data sources, alerting updates, and more

Our engineering team is hard at work on Grafana 12, the next major release of the open source data visualization platform that we’re launching at GrafanaCON this May, but in the meantime, Grafana 11.6 is officially here — and there’s a lot to be excited about. The latest minor release delivers a number of new dashboarding features, including one-click data links and actions, along with other notable updates related to security, alerting, and more.

The state of observability in 2025: a deep dive on our third annual Observability Survey

Across companies of all shapes and sizes, observability practices are maturing and getting attention at the highest levels. At the same time, cost and complexity continue to hinder efforts as teams look to emerging tools to help simplify their processes in hopes of better outcomes. With so much in flux, we went into our third annual Observability Survey hoping to get a window into the ways the community is approaching observability and where it wants it to go next.

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!

How to use text box variables in Grafana dashboards

Text box variables let users type whatever they want -- great for text filtering and searching! In this video we'll look at how to use text box variables in Grafana 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.

How to redact secrets from logs with Grafana Alloy and Loki

In any observability stack, logs are essential for uncovering insights, troubleshooting issues, and ensuring system health. However, managing the security of logged data presents its own challenges, especially when it comes to preventing sensitive information, like API keys and credentials, from slipping into logs. Secrets can originate from a variety of sources, and it’s often challenging to predict which applications or services might inadvertently expose sensitive information.

An open source app for easily building performance tests: Grafana k6 Studio is generally available

Here at Grafana Labs, we have an on-going commitment to providing solutions that increase productivity without sacrificing ease-of-use. Last year, in line with that effort, we introduced experimental and public preview releases of Grafana k6 Studio, an open source desktop application that helps you create k6 test scripts quickly and easily via a visual interface. Today, we’re excited to share the general availability of k6 Studio v1.0.