The following are the core components that power Grafana Alerting and coordinate effective alert rule management, evaluation, and notification delivery:

• Alert Rules: These define the conditions under which an alert should fire. Each rule includes a query, condition, evaluation interval, and optional annotations for clarity.
• Contact Points: Contact points specify where and how alert notifications are delivered (e.g., email, Microsoft Teams, Slack, webhook). They centralize notification management.
• Notification Policies: These determine how alerts are routed to contact points. Policies evaluate alerts by labels or severity and apply routing rules and silences accordingly.
• Silences: Temporary suppression rules for alerts to avoid unnecessary notifications during planned maintenance or known issues.
• Alert Groups: Organize related alert rules under common evaluation settings, helping with performance optimization and logical grouping.
• Evaluation Engine: The engine responsible for running alert rule evaluations at defined intervals and determining if the alert condition has been met.
• Labels and Annotations: Alerts use labels for grouping and routing, while annotations offer descriptive metadata for better incident context.

Setting up Grafana Alerting involves creating alert rules, contact points, and notification policies. Follow these steps to get started with basic alerting functionality:

1. Access Grafana Alerting:
   From the Grafana sidebar, go to Alerting and then click on Alert rules to manage or create alert conditions.
2. Create a New Alert Rule:
   Click + New alert rule. Configure the rule by choosing a data source, writing a query, and then setting the alert condition (e.g., temperature exceeds threshold).
3. Define the Alert Conditions:
   Set parameters such as when the condition triggers, how long it must persist (for duration), and how often the rule is evaluated.
4. Set Labels and Annotations:
   Add labels to help group and route alerts, and annotations to provide useful context, such as a summary or runbook link.
5. Create a Contact Point:
   Navigate to Alerting > Contact points. Select your preferred notification method (Slack, email, webhook, Teams) and configure it accordingly.
6. Define a Notification Policy:
   Go to Notification policies under the alerting section. Set policies to route alerts to the appropriate contact point based on labels or conditions.
7. Save and Enable Your Alert Rule:
   Click Save to activate the rule. As soon as the defined condition is met, Grafana will evaluate the rule and send out notifications through the specified contact point.

Grafana Alerting offers advanced capabilities designed for large-scale monitoring, complex workflows, and fine-grained control over alert behavior:

• Multi-Dimensional Alerting: Allows alerts to be triggered based on multiple label values, evaluating grouped metrics like CPU usage across several nodes or instances.
• Grouped Rule Evaluations: Alert rules can be organized into groups that share the same evaluation interval to reduce computational overhead and improve consistency.
• Custom Alert Routing: Notification policies use matching labels to intelligently route alerts to different contact points depending on team, severity, or environment.
• Templated Notifications: Messages sent to contact points can be customized using variables and templates, allowing for clear and actionable communication.
• Silencing & Inhibition: Alerts can be silenced based on label matches to prevent noisy or redundant alerts, especially during maintenance windows or outages.
• Provenance and History: Built-in alert history lets you track past alert states and events to better understand escalation patterns and reduce false positives.
• Integration with External Systems: Webhook contact points and message templating allow alerts to trigger external workflows, like opening tickets or running automation scripts.
• Pause and Test Alerts: Alert rules can be paused, tested, or manually evaluated to ensure they behave as expected before full deployment.