Setting up Google Cloud monitoring in Dash0 requires granting permissions to the Dash0 service account and enabling the Cloud Monitoring API in your GCP projects.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:

A GCP project with billing enabled
Permissions to grant IAM roles in your GCP project (typically roles/resourcemanager.projectIamAdmin or roles/owner)

Note

Cloud Monitoring is enabled by default on most GCP projects. If you're unsure, check the APIs & Services page in the Google Cloud Console. If it is not enabled, Dash0 enables it for you.

Integration Setup

Follow these steps to connect your GCP projects to Dash0 and begin collecting infrastructure metrics.

1. Navigate to Integration Hub

In Dash0, go to Settings from the left sidebar, then select Integrations from the organization settings menu.

Select Google Cloud Platform from the available integrations.

2. Authorize Dash0 Access

Click Add to begin setting up a new GCP integration.

In the integration setup dialog, click Connect with Google to begin the OAuth authorization flow.

You'll be redirected to Google to sign in and grant permissions.

The Dash0 integration requires the following permissions:

roles/monitoring.viewer — Read access to Cloud Monitoring metrics for all supported services

3. Select Projects

After authorization, choose which GCP projects to monitor from your GCP organization.

Select the projects you want to monitor and assign them to datasets. You can add or remove projects at any time from the integration settings.

Click Connect projects to complete the setup. Dash0 will configure the integration and verify access to your projects.

Dash0 will automatically discover and monitor all supported resources (Cloud Run services, Pub/Sub topics and subscriptions, Cloud Storage buckets) in the selected projects.

4. Verify Metrics Collection

Within 5 to 10 minutes of setup, metrics should begin appearing in Dash0. Navigate to Infrastructure > Google Cloud to verify that your services are being monitored.

You can view detailed telemetry data for each service:

The overview tab provides comprehensive monitoring dashboards:

Resource attributes provide additional context about your services:

If metrics don't appear, check the troubleshooting section below.

Collector-Based Setup (Alternative)

If you prefer to use the OpenTelemetry Collector for metrics collection (for example, when running the Collector in your own GKE cluster), you can configure the googlecloudmonitoringreceiver receiver:

yaml

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receivers:
  googlecloudmonitoringreceiver:
    collection_interval: 1m
    project_id: YOUR_GCP_PROJECT_ID
    metrics_list:
      - metric_name: "run.googleapis.com/container/cpu/utilizations"
      - metric_name: "run.googleapis.com/request_count"
      # ... additional metrics

exporters:
  otlp/dash0:
    endpoint: YOUR_DASH0_ENDPOINT
    auth:
      authenticator: bearertokenauth/dash0

extensions:
  bearertokenauth/dash0:
    scheme: Bearer
    token: ${DASH0_AUTH_TOKEN}

service:
  extensions: [bearertokenauth/dash0]
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [googlecloudmonitoringreceiver]
      exporters: [otlp/dash0]

Tip

When running the Collector on GKE, use Workload Identity to bind a Kubernetes service account to a GCP service account with roles/monitoring.viewer. This eliminates the need for service account key files. See the Workload Identity documentation for setup details.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter issues with the GCP integration, the following solutions address common setup and configuration problems.

Metrics Not Appearing

If metrics don't appear after setup:

Check API enablement: Verify the Cloud Monitoring API is enabled in your GCP project
Verify billing: Ensure billing is active on your project (Cloud Monitoring requires billing beyond the free tier)
Confirm permissions: Check that the Dash0 service account has the roles/monitoring.viewer role in the target project
Check resource existence: Verify that the services you expect to monitor (Cloud Run, Pub/Sub, etc.) are actually deployed and generating metrics

Missing Specific Services

If some services appear but others don't:

Region selection: Confirm you've selected the correct regions in the integration settings
Resource filters: Check if any filters are active that might exclude certain resources
Recent deployments: Newly created resources may take up to 5 minutes to appear

Permission Errors

If you see permission errors during setup:

IAM role propagation: IAM changes can take up to 5 minutes to propagate. Wait and retry.
Organization policies: Check if your GCP organization has policies that restrict service account permissions
Project-level access: Ensure you have permission to grant IAM roles at the project level

Next Steps

Monitor Cloud Run Services — Monitor Cloud Run service metrics
Monitor Pub/Sub — Track message throughput and latency
Monitor Cloud Storage — Observe bucket usage and API requests

Set Up Google Cloud Integration