Deploying Tempo Distributed Tracing Backend on Ubuntu 24.04

Tempo is an open-source, high-scale distributed tracing backend from Grafana Labs that ingests trace spans over Jaeger, OpenTelemetry, and Zipkin protocols. It requires only object storage and pairs natively with Grafana for trace visualization. This guide deploys Tempo using Docker Compose with Traefik handling automatic HTTPS, and verifies the backend through its status endpoints, following distributed tracing deployment practices documented in Vultr Docs.

Set Up the Directory Structure

1. Create the project directory structure:

$ mkdir -p ~/tempo-tracing/{tempo-data,tempo-config}
$ cd ~/tempo-tracing

2. Set ownership for the Tempo data directory:

$ sudo chown -R 10001:10001 tempo-data

3. Create the environment file:

$ nano .env

DOMAIN=tempo.example.com
LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL=admin@example.com

4. Create the Tempo configuration file:

$ nano tempo-config/tempo-config.yaml

server:
  http_listen_port: 3200

distributor:
  receivers:
    jaeger:
      protocols:
        thrift_http:
        grpc:
    otlp:
      protocols:
        http:
        grpc:

storage:
  trace:
    backend: local
    local:
      path: /var/tempo/traces
    wal:
      path: /var/tempo/wal

compactor:
  compaction:
    block_retention: 168h

Deploy with Docker Compose

1. Create the Docker Compose manifest:

$ nano docker-compose.yaml

services:
  traefik:
    image: traefik:v3.6
    container_name: traefik
    command:
      - "--providers.docker=true"
      - "--providers.docker.exposedbydefault=false"
      - "--entrypoints.web.address=:80"
      - "--entrypoints.websecure.address=:443"
      - "--entrypoints.web.http.redirections.entrypoint.to=websecure"
      - "--entrypoints.web.http.redirections.entrypoint.scheme=https"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.httpchallenge=true"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.httpchallenge.entrypoint=web"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.email=${LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL}"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.letsencrypt.acme.storage=/letsencrypt/acme.json"
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
    volumes:
      - "letsencrypt:/letsencrypt"
      - "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro"
    restart: unless-stopped

  tempo:
    image: grafana/tempo:latest
    container_name: tempo
    hostname: tempo
    expose:
      - "3200"
      - "4317"
      - "4318"
      - "14250"
      - "14268"
    volumes:
      - "./tempo-config/tempo-config.yaml:/etc/tempo/tempo.yaml"
      - "./tempo-data:/var/tempo"
    command: -config.file=/etc/tempo/tempo.yaml
    labels:
      - "traefik.enable=true"
      - "traefik.http.routers.tempo.rule=Host(`${DOMAIN}`)"
      - "traefik.http.routers.tempo.entrypoints=websecure"
      - "traefik.http.routers.tempo.tls.certresolver=letsencrypt"
      - "traefik.http.services.tempo.loadbalancer.server.port=3200"
    restart: unless-stopped

volumes:
  letsencrypt:

2. Start the services:

$ docker compose up -d

3. Verify the services are running:

$ docker compose ps

4. View the logs:

$ docker compose logs

Access Tempo

1. Check the readiness endpoint:

$ curl https://tempo.example.com/ready

A ready response confirms the backend is up.

2. Query the service status:

$ curl https://tempo.example.com/status

3. Check the build information:

$ curl https://tempo.example.com/api/status/buildinfo

{"version":"v2.9.0","revision":"032d47627","branch":"main","buildUser":"","buildDate":"","goVersion":"go1.25.1"}

Next Steps

Tempo is running and accepting distributed trace spans over HTTPS. From here you can:

• Add Tempo as a data source in Grafana for trace visualization

• Point OpenTelemetry, Jaeger, or Zipkin exporters at your domain

• Swap the local storage backend for S3-compatible object storage at scale

For the full guide with additional tips, visit the original article on Vultr Docs.