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Observability with Grafana, Prometheus,Loki, Alloy and Tempo (Udemy.com)

Master Observability with Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, Alloy, Mimir and OpenTelemetry

Created by: Aref Karimi

Last updated September 2026

Our take

Based on the ratings of 6,261 students, a sample of their written reviews and the syllabus, as the course stood in September 2026. No course pays to be reviewed.

Aref Karimi's course walks through the Grafana stack in about 7.6 hours and 113 lectures. It starts with observability basics and Prometheus, moves through Grafana dashboards and alerts, then covers Loki for logs, Alloy and OpenTelemetry, Tempo for traces, and a section on Mimir. Everything hangs off a made-up shoe retailer called ShoeHub. It is aimed at developers, DevOps engineers and architects, and it works best as a broad survey. More than 45,000 students have taken it, and the rating is 4.5 from over 6,000 reviews.

Most reviewers like the teaching. They call the explanations clear and the instructor knowledgeable, and one newer learner found the pace fine. The complaints are specific. The Grafana UI has moved on since recording, so screens look different. Several people say the ShoeHub example app or the Docker configs for Tempo and Mimir would not run, and some provided images are only built for amd64 and fail on a Mac. A few say Q&A questions go unanswered, and some find the delivery slow or sleepy. One reviewer with a year of Linux needed Google and ChatGPT to get through.

The listing shows an update in September 2026, but the broken-config reviews in our sample are older than that, so skim the recent Q&A before paying. Around 84 percent of ratings are four or five stars, against 91 one-star and 124 two-star ratings. For a cheap overview of Loki, Alloy and Tempo it is reasonable. For deep Mimir work or production rollouts, look elsewhere, and expect to do some troubleshooting of your own.

Best forDevelopers and DevOps people who want a guided overview of Prometheus, Loki, Tempo and Alloy in one place.
Skip it ifYou want current, copy-paste-ready configs or deep production detail on Mimir and Kubernetes.

Pros

  • Reviewers call the explanations clear and the instructor knowledgeable
  • One course covers Prometheus, Loki, Alloy, Tempo and Mimir with a shared ShoeHub example
  • Killer Coda browser lab and Docker Compose files let learners practice without a full local install
  • Dashboards, alerts and admin topics like OAuth and LDAP sit alongside the newer tools

Cons

  • Reviewers report the ShoeHub example and some Tempo and Mimir Docker configs fail on current versions
  • Some images are amd64 only and fail on Macs, and the Grafana UI has changed since recording
  • No quizzes or coding exercises, and some find the delivery slow or the Q&A quiet
It seems that Grafana's UI has changed a bit since this course was created, but I was still able to adapt the instructions accordingly without much trouble.
Brian Kolden, a student

Listed for all levels, but one reviewer new to Docker and Linux needed Google and ChatGPT to get through.

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What you will learn

  • Fundamentals of Observability (types of telemetry data, metric collection methods etc.)
  • Prometheus (Installation, Configuration and Usage) comprising 21 lectures.
  • Installation of Grafana on Windows, Mac, Linux (multiple flavours) and with Docker.
  • Architecture of Highly Available and Highly Scalable Grafana for Produciton use.
  • Dashboard Design Best Practices (Browser Apps, Backend Apps and Infrastructure)
  • Building Dashboards and Graphs in Grafana
  • Creating and Managing Alerts and Notifications in Grafana
  • Integration with MySQL, SQL Server, AWS CloudWatch, GCP etc.
  • Grafana Loki: Retrieval and Visualisation of Logs
  • Administration of Grafana (Users, Teams, OAuth integraiton, LDAP integration etc.)
  • Opentelemetry
  • Grafana Alloy
  • Grafana Tempo

Course content

16 sections · 113 lectures · 7.6 hours of video 5 articles

  1. 1Introduction 1 free preview1 lecture · 1 min
  2. 2Foundations of Observability 1 free preview6 lectures · 18 min
  3. 3Installing Prometheus & Collecting Metrics on Any OS 1 free preview22 lectures · 1.5 hours
  4. 4Installing and Configuring Grafana7 lectures · 26 min
  5. 5Using Grafana17 lectures · 50 min
  6. 6Working with Alerts, Notifications and Annotations in Grafana6 lectures · 20 min
  7. 7Grafana Loki 1 free preview8 lectures · 38 min
  8. 8Grafana Alloy for collecting Opentelemetry Signals 1 free preview9 lectures · 28 min
  9. 9Grafana Tempo: Tracing in Distributed Systems 1 free preview10 lectures · 40 min
  10. 10Grafana Mimir: Observability at Scale 1 free preview10 lectures · 1.2 hours

Who it is for

The instructor says it suits

  • DevOps Engineers
  • Developers
  • Solution Architects

What you need before you start

  • A Windows, Mac or Linux Computer with Administrative access.
  • Docker Desktop (Installation instruction is included in the course)
  • GitHub Desktop
  • Elementary knowledge of Computers, IT, and Networks.

How it compares

Against the other 1,182 rated Udemy courses in IT & Software on CourseDuck:

  • Rating4.5 out of 5higher than 45% of them
  • Reviews6,261#87 of 1,183 by number of reviews
  • Length7.6 hourslonger than 61% of them
  • Last updatedSeptember 2026more recently than 93% of them

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Course Description

Master observability with the Grafana Stack, including Grafana Loki for logs, Grafana Tempo for distributed tracing, Grafana Alloy as an Open Telemetry (OTel) collector, and Grafana Mimir for large-scale enterprise metrics storage, by by enrolling in this top rated course, which has been the best selling Grafana course on Udemy for seven consecutive years!

This course provides a comprehensive, hands-on path to building modern observability systems. It starts with metrics using Prometheus and progresses to logs, traces, alerting, and custom dashboards in Grafana.

We begin with the core concepts of observability, telemetry data, and methods for metric collection. Then, you'll dive into Prometheus — learning how to install, configure, and use it like a pro.

Next, you'll deploy Grafana across Windows, macOS, Linux (including Ubuntu and Amazon Linux), and Docker. Once your stack runs, we cover Grafana dashboard design for real-world use cases: APIs, infrastructure, and microservices.

In the logging section, you'll work with Grafana Loki to ingest and visualise logs, including dynamic label extraction from unstructured logs.

Then we go deeper: you'll learn the fundamentals of OpenTelemetry and set up Grafana Alloy to receive, process, and export OTel metrics and traces. You'll instrument microservices (in Python and C#) and export signals to Grafana Tempo, where you'll trace distributed calls and analyze service graphs with TraceQL.

Now also included is Grafana Mimir, a highly scalable time-series database for storing metrics at scale. You'll learn what Mimir is, how it works, and how to deploy it locally in monolithic mode and microservices mode into Kubernetes.

To make it practical, the course is based on a fictional online retailer, ShoeHub, with mock data, dashboards, alerts, and services that simulate real-world observability use cases.

No setup headaches — you'll also get instant access to a browser-based playground powered by Killer Coda, so you can start experimenting without installing anything.


Included in the course:


  • Docker Compose files for Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, Alloy, Tempo, Mimir, ShoHub metrics, and Example Microservices Tracing.

  • Sample dashboards and panel configurations.

  • Log generator script in Python.

  • Set up guides for multiple platforms.

  • Binary executable files for ShoeHub and the example microservices (if you don't want to use Docker).

  • Optional cloud lab environment (Killer Coda) for instant hands-on practice.

I will respond promptly via the Udemy Q&A system if you encounter any issues or have questions.

Happy learning — and welcome to the world of observability!


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Instructor Details

Aref Karimi

Aref is a seasoned technology leader, strategist, and entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience driving innovation and growth in the tech industry. As a CTO and advisor, Aref has helped startups and enterprises align technology with business goals, delivering measurable results.


Aref is also a published author of several top-selling books, including:

- Tech Leadership for Profit: The CTO's Guide to Building a Thriving IT Company.

- Digital Transformation: From Bricks to Bits!

- The Vendor Management Playbook: Turn Your Vendor Relationships into a Competitive Advantage.

In addition to being an accomplished author, Aref is a passionate educator who teaches courses on Udemy and LinkedIn Learning. His courses, consistently the highest-rated and best-selling for over seven years, empower professionals to excel in software development, observability, DevOps, and leadership by providing practical insights and actionable strategies.

Join Aref's courses to gain real-world expertise and elevate your career!

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Reviews

4.5

6,261 ratings on Udemy

Select a bar to show only those reviews.Select the bar again to show every rating.

By Deepak Salian on 8/22/2026

New Knowledge added to my bucket in my Architecture Journey. Cool ThankYou. Also refreshed my AWS and Kubernetes Knowledge.

By Rafael Lucas de Melo Farias on 7/28/2026

He has a strong command of the subject and communicates his knowledge clearly and effectively.

By Leonardo De Angelis on 7/24/2026

Mi sarebbe piaciuto qualche esempio un po' più approfondito

By Kevin Karanda on 7/21/2026

Introduction lays down a proper foundation of what you are getting yourself into. You know exactly what to expect next

By Alessandro Antico on 5/26/2026

insegnante eccellente il materiale potrebbe: - essere maggiormente suddiviso in step secondo le fasi del corso (file di conf, docker compose file) - essere maggiormente correlato da documenti di sintesi

By Priyanshu Pradhan on 3/23/2026

Everything is really good Just was confused on which server install what. Need diagrams to see the placements before installing. Overall very good course

By Kristian Cerrone on 3/12/2026

I thought the information and resources were great. Unfortunately the course can jump around a bit between platforms, be a bit confusing to follow, and use dated interfaces. My perspective is I have about a year in linux environments, and have never personally touched any of the Prometheus, Loki, Grafana, Docker, etc... used in this course. Without secondary resources (Google and ChatGPT), I would not have been able to get through this course.

By Carol M Smith on 3/10/2026

The pace is good with pertinent examples and documentation. As a newer person to the content I am able to follow the course

By Brian Kolden on 2/18/2026

The course touches on a lot of different configuration options and functionality. It seems that Grafana's UI has changed a bit since this course was created, but I was still able to adapt the instructions accordingly without much trouble.

By Alexandre do Nascimento de Oliveira on 12/28/2025

This course offers a good view and understanding of the LGTM stack, how to configure it, and so on. Unfortunately, there were many issues during the course that, without asking GPT, I would never have finished. I asked a simple question at the beginning of the course due to an issue in the docker compose file, and after 4 months, no answer yet.

By Venkata Anil Kumar Pasumarthy Pasumarthy on 11/21/2020

Great course. Nice Explanation

By Mariana Avelino on 11/14/2020

Because the focus is Grafana + Grafite and I wanted an in-depth exploration of Grafana + ElasticSearcg

Showing 12 of 215 reviews

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Overall Score : 90 / 100