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Grafana's Big Tent

Grafana Labs

A Grafana Labs' show all about the people, community, tools, and tech around Observability.

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  • 20 episodes
  • Updated July 10

Episodes20

Newest first
  • July 10 · 1 hr 3 min

    The AI Software Engineering Revolution, feat. Anthropic

    In this episode of Grafana's Big Tent, hosts Mat Ryer (Senior Director of AI, Grafana Labs) and Tom Wilkie (CTO, Grafana Labs) sit down with Eric Burns, Field Executive Architect at Anthropic, to talk about building trust between tech and business execs, why Anthropic bet early on running across every major cloud, and what it was like watching large language models go from "interesting" to "obviously the future" in real time. The conversation ranges from the earliest goosebumps moments of natural-language UI generation, to Claude writing better MCP servers than humans, to the very real question of whether engineers should still be reading code at all. Along the way: coding on planes, instrumenting a Zigbee mesh with Claude Code, why "recovering engineers" are getting their dopamine hits back, and whether a human reviewing an AI's code is adding value or just getting in the way.

  • April 3 · 1 hr 2 min

    Building Better Go Systems with Logs, Context, and Profiling

    In this episode of Grafana’s Big Tent, host Mat Ryer is joined by Donia Chaiehloudj (Isovalent), Charles Korn (Grafana Labs), and Bryan Boreham (Grafana Labs) to break down how to make Go applications observable from day one. The discussion covers logs, slog, tracing with context, errors, pprof, continuous profiling, and eBPF.

  • February 27 · 1 hr 2 min

    Agents in Production: The Future of AI-Driven Observability

    In this episode of Grafana’s Big Tent, host Tom Wilkie is joined by Spiros Xanthos (Founder & CEO, Resolve AI), Manoj Acharya (VP of Engineering at Grafana Labs), and Cyril Tovena (Principal Software Engineer, Grafana Assistant team) to explore the rapidly evolving world of agentic AI in production systems. They dig into automated root cause analysis, knowledge graphs, and how AI agents are beginning to operate alongside — and sometimes ahead of — human engineers. The conversation tackles trust, pricing models, data privacy, and whether we’re approaching a future where incidents resolve themselves. Plus: Tesla autopilot analogies, AI-written performance reviews, and what’s next beyond observability.

  • February 13 · 57 min

    The Evolution of OpenTelemetry with Co-founder Ted Young

    In this episode, hosts Mat Ryer and Matt Toback sit down with Ted Young, co-founder of OpenTelemetry, to unpack the real story behind OTel — from its Google origins to today’s push toward zero-touch observability. They explore how OpenTelemetry emerged from the merger of OpenTracing and OpenCensus, why the “three pillars” model may be holding teams back, and what the infamous logs vs. events debate reveals about how the industry thinks about data. Ted breaks down the technical and philosophical shifts happening in observability, including context propagation, structured telemetry, semantic conventions, and why backwards compatibility matters more than most people realize.

  • January 30 · 1 hr 1 min

    The Future of Dashboards: Git Sync, SQL Expressions, and Dynamic Layouts

    Mat Ryer and Tom Wilkie sit down with Grafana creator, Torkel Ödegaard, and Grafana Labs' Distinguished Engineer, Ryan McKinley, to unpack Grafana 12’s biggest shifts and experiments. Topics include the new dashboard API and Git sync workflows for dashboards as code, dynamic/constraint-based layouts and conditional panels, SQL expressions for joining query results, and the new assistant sidebar. They also reflect on Grafana’s history, how ease of use and looking “cool” helped adoption, and practical guidance for teams operating at scale.

  • January 16 · 1 hr 4 min

    From Pitch to Product: How Grafana's Hackathons Turn Weird Ideas into Real Features

    Hosts Mat Ryer and Matt Toback welcome Grafana engineers Sven Großmann, Alexa Vargas Ortega, and Lukasz Gut for a deep dive into Grafana’s internal hackathons. They discuss ideation, team formation, tooling (including AI-assisted coding), and the path from hackathon prototype to product feature — plus the occasional bird- and board-game tangent.

  • January 2 · 1 hr

    Building Grafana Mimir’s Next-Gen Architecture with WarpStream Co-Founder, Ryan Worl

    In this episode of Grafana’s Big Tent, hosts Mat Ryer and Tom Wilkie sit down with Marco Pracucci (Principal Software Engineer, Grafana Labs), Cyril Tovena (Principal Software Engineer, Grafana Labs, and Ryan Worl (Co-founder, WarpStream) to unpack the next-generation architecture for Grafana Mimir. They discuss why decoupling the read and write paths matters, how Kafka-style partition guarantees change the game, and why replication-factor-three had become a costly bottleneck. Along the way: multi-AZ realities, object storage “loopholes,” and what new flexibility unlocks across the Grafana stack.

  • Dec 19, 2025 · 53 min

    Inside Prometheus 3.0: UTF-8, Native Histograms, and OpenTelemetry Interoperability

    In this episode of Grafana’s Big Tent, hosts Mat Ryer and Tom Wilkie sit down with Julius Volz, co-creator of Prometheus and founder of PromLabs, and Richi "RichiH" Hartmann, Prometheus maintainer and Senior Developer Programs Director at Grafana Labs, to unpack Prometheus 3.0. They trace Prometheus back to its beginnings at SoundCloud, where Julius and his colleagues were trying to recreate the magic of Google’s Borgmon. The group dives into why Prometheus stuck with a text-based exposition format, what’s new in 3.0 — including performance gains, revamped UI, UTF-8 support, and native histograms — and how it fits alongside OpenTelemetry. Along the way, they explore governance changes, future directions, and why emojis are now valid in metric names.

  • Dec 5, 2025 · 38 min

    Confessions of a serial tinkerer: Homelabs gone wild, secret raspberry pi stashes, and more

    Recorded live at GrafanaCon Seattle, hosts Mat Ryer and Tom Wilkie kick off Season 3 of Grafana’s Big Tent by welcoming Ivana Huckova (Staff Software Engineer, Grafana Labs), Andrew McCalip (Head of Research and Development, Varda Space Industries), and Brad Fitzpatrick (Chief Engineer, Tailscale). They swap first-tinkering stories and laugh through IoT wins and fails (dog happiness monitors, candle sensors—oops). Andrew explains how his self-righting, foam-filled autonomous boat survives the open seas, while Brad shares how he uses AI to 3D-print OpenSCAD parts on demand.

  • Jan 10, 2025 · 45 min

    Making 3D Printing Observable with Prusa Research

    In the season two finale, hosts Tom Wilkie and Mat Ryer are joined by Richard "RichiH" Hartmann, Director of Community at Grafana Labs, and Pavel Strobl of Prusa Research to explore the intersection of 3D printing and observability. Prusa Research not only produces 3D printers that both Tom and Richi use to create everything from wind tunnels to miniature Grots, but the company also uses Grafana internally for their own systems, making this a dynamic conversation about how Grafana is being used to monitor and improve physical manufacturing processes as well as IT infrastructure.

  • Dec 20, 2024 · 1 hr 4 min

    The Past, Present, and Future of OpenTelemetry

    Two members of the OpenTelemetry governing board, Daniel Gomez Blanco and Juraci Paixão Kröhling, join Mat and Matt to dive deep into the evolution of OTel from its early days (including the story of how OTel got its name) to its current state and future roadmap.

  • Dec 6, 2024 · 1 hr 6 min

    Kubernetes, Kepler, and Carbon Footprints: The Latest Tools and Strategies to Optimize Observability

    Hosted by Tom Wilkie, this week's episode features Thomas Dullien, former Co-Founder and CEO of Optimyze; Bryan Boreham, Grafana Labs' distinguished engineer; and Senior Software Engineer at Grafana Labs and member of the CNCF Environmental Sustainability TAG Niki Manoledaki. Together, they delve into the complex world of cloud resource management and sustainability and explore the intricate challenges of optimizing Kubernetes clusters, from understanding allocation versus utilization to developing strategies that reduce waste and carbon footprint.

  • Nov 15, 2024 · 49 min

    Inside Grafana 11 with Founder Torkel Ödegaard

    Join hosts Tom Wilkie and Mat Ryer along with Torkel Ödegaard, the creator of Grafana, and Mitch Seaman, Senior Product Director for Grafana, as they dive into the making of Grafana 11 and explore how the observability platform is evolving to meet the needs of both novice and expert users. From how hackathon projects are transformed into major features like Explore Metrics and Logs, to the years-long journey of replacing Angular, they share the technical challenges and achievements behind Grafana's latest major release. The conversation covers improving the getting-started experience, adding enterprise features like cloud migration tools, how Grafana's development process has matured, the upcoming roadmap for datasources, and so much more.

  • Nov 1, 2024 · 1 hr 1 min

    How eBPF Makes Observability Awesome

    Hosts Tom Wilkie and Matt Toback sit down with guests Liz Rice from Isovalent and Mario Macías from Grafana Labs to explore how eBPF is revolutionizing observability, networking, and security in modern infrastructure. They cover what eBPF is (hint: it's no longer just about packet filtering!), the performance advantages of eBPF-based instrumentation compared to traditional methods, what's in store for the future of eBPF, and so much more. Liz and Mario also share their firsthand experiences developing widely-adopted eBPF tools like Cilium, Tetragon, and Grafana Beyla, offering practical insights into how these technologies are transforming observability (and making it awesome!).

  • Oct 18, 2024 · 1 hr 8 min

    Monitoring Kubernetes: Why traditional techniques aren't enough

    In this episode of Grafana's Big Tent, hosts Mat Ryer and Tom Wilkie dive into the world of monitoring Kubernetes with guests Vasil Kaftandzhiev from Grafana Labs and Dio Tsoumas who leads the DevOps team at the consumer research company GWI. They explore why traditional monitoring techniques aren't enough for Kubernetes environments and discuss the evolving landscape of observability in cloud-native architectures.

  • Oct 4, 2024 · 55 min

    Adapting to the Metrics Cardinality Crisis

    Join host Mat Ryer as he explores the world of Adaptive Metrics with Grafana Labs engineers Patrick Oyarzun and Mauro Stettler, alongside guest Oren Lion from TeleTracking. What started as a hackathon project has evolved into a game-changing feature that helps organizations manage their metrics more efficiently and cost-effectively. They discuss the challenge of metric cardinality explosion in modern cloud-native architectures, the journey from prototype to production, and balancing cost savings with data accessibility and reliability. Whether you're dealing with metric overload or just curious about the latest in observability, this episode will help you understand how organizations are tackling the challenge of metrics management at scale.

  • Sep 20, 2024 · 55 min

    Observability to Controllability: Lessons in DDoS Mitigation with Cloudflare

    In this episode of Grafana's Big Tent, host Matt Toback explores the world of DDoS protection and observability with guests Alex Forster, Engineering Manager at CloudFlare, and Dee Kitchen, VP of Engineering at Grafana Labs. They discuss the challenges of detecting and mitigating DDoS attacks, the importance of automation in maintaining high availability, and the intricate balance between observability and control in modern tech infrastructures. From explaining complex concepts through relatable metaphors to discussing real-world experiences with state-level attacks, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.

  • Sep 6, 2024 · 1 hr 2 min

    The (No) Blame Game: A Sustainable Approach to Incident Management

    In this episode, hosts Tom Wilkie and Mat Ryer are teaming up with Grafana Labs’ Devin Cheevers and Prezi’s Alex Koehler to tackle the world of on-call responsibilities and incident management. Alex digs into Prezi's tech stack and provides a real-world look at observability practices and the lessons learned from managing a complex microservices architecture. Tune in to hear best practices for balancing innovation and reliability, but stay to hear everyone share the worst incident they’ve caused.

  • Aug 23, 2024 · 1 hr 7 min

    Cache Rules Everything Around Me

    To kick off season two of Grafana's Big Tent podcast, our host Mat Ryer is back and he's bringing along some heavy hitters! Get ready for a deep dive into the world of caching with Memcached maintainer Alan Kasindorf (aka dormando), along with caching aficionados Danny Kopping and Ed Welch. They’ll discuss CPU-level to application-level caching and share strategies that supercharge performance, especially in high-traffic, distributed systems like Grafana Loki.