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This recipe ships data emitted by msb-metrics. See the msb-metrics page for the flag reference, metric names, and deployment constraints.
Grafana Alloy is Grafana’s OpenTelemetry Collector distribution with a programmable pipeline DSL. Run it locally as a forwarder so msb-metrics doesn’t have to deal with retries, batching, credential rotation, or backend hiccups. This is the recommended setup for production deployments. Alloy sits between msb-metrics and the upstream backend. msb-metrics ships locally over plain OTLP with no auth; Alloy owns the credentials, the upstream connection, and the buffering through hiccups.
1

Install Alloy

Follow the Alloy install guide for your platform.
2

Configure an OTLP receiver and Grafana Cloud exporter

Save as /etc/alloy/config.alloy:
otelcol.receiver.otlp "ingest" {
  grpc { endpoint = "127.0.0.1:4317" }
  http { endpoint = "127.0.0.1:4318" }

  output {
    metrics = [otelcol.processor.batch.metrics.input]
  }
}

otelcol.processor.batch "metrics" {
  output {
    metrics = [otelcol.exporter.otlphttp.grafana_cloud.input]
  }
}

otelcol.exporter.otlphttp "grafana_cloud" {
  client {
    endpoint = "https://otlp-gateway-prod-us-east-2.grafana.net/otlp"
    auth     = otelcol.auth.basic.grafana_cloud.handler
  }
}

otelcol.auth.basic "grafana_cloud" {
  username = sys.env("GC_INSTANCE_ID")
  password = sys.env("GC_API_TOKEN")
}
Sub the OTLP gateway region for yours.
3

Start Alloy

GC_INSTANCE_ID=...  GC_API_TOKEN=...  alloy run /etc/alloy/config.alloy
4

Point msb-metrics at Alloy

msb-metrics otel --endpoint=http://localhost:4317
Alloy owns the upstream connection from here.

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Why this is better for production

  • Buffering survives backend hiccups. Alloy holds data when Grafana Cloud is slow or unreachable; msb-metrics’s per-exporter buffer alone has a ~20MB cap at the default --max-buffered=60 with 1000 sandboxes.
  • Credential rotation doesn’t touch msb-metrics. Rotate the Grafana Cloud token in Alloy’s config (or via env vars + a config reload) without restarting the collector.
  • Multiple destinations. Alloy can fan out to additional backends (Prometheus remote-write, Mimir, etc.) without changing the msb-metrics configuration.

​
Reference