%% date:: [[2023-05-11]], [[2023-05-12]] parent:: %% # [[k6 Insights]] k6 Insights is a platform that receives [[Traces]] from [[k6 (tool)|k6]] requests that travel through an application under test and converts them into a format for visualization and correlation with other test metadata. [[xk6-distributed-tracing]] is sometimes called *Crocospans* (its internal hackathon name) or *Grafana Cloud Traces* (its commercial SaaS name). ## How it works ![[k6-insights-how-it-works.png]] In the diagram above: - A k6 test is executed, and the output is sent to two places. - k6 sends information about request metadata, including the traceID, timestamps, test run labels, and protocol labels, to k6 Insights (as part of Grafana Cloud k6). This is currently done using [[xk6-distributed-tracing]], but will eventually be incorporated into [[k6 tracing]]. - k6 also sends the instrumented request to the system under test. - An Agent running on the system under test sends the span information to Grafana Cloud Traces. [[Grafana Cloud Traces]] is the commercial solution for [[Grafana Tempo|Tempo]] and is the tracing backend. - Tempo processes the raw span information and sends the tracing data to Grafana Cloud k6. - On Grafana Cloud k6, the Insights backend compares and correlates the metadata from k6 with the tracing data from Tempo.