Grafana

Open-source analytics and interactive visualization platform.

Installation

Docker

# Run Grafana
docker run -d \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  --name grafana \
  grafana/grafana

# Run with persistent storage
docker run -d \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -v grafana-storage:/var/lib/grafana \
  --name grafana \
  grafana/grafana

# Run with custom config
docker run -d \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -v $(pwd)/grafana.ini:/etc/grafana/grafana.ini \
  --name grafana \
  grafana/grafana

Binary

# Download
wget https://dl.grafana.com/oss/release/grafana-10.2.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz

# Extract
tar -zxvf grafana-10.2.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz

# Run
cd grafana-10.2.0
./bin/grafana-server web

Authentication

COMMAND	DESCRIPTION
admin/admin	Default credentials
Settings > Users > Change Password	Change password
Settings > Users > Invite	Invite users
Settings > Users > Add User	Add user

Data Sources

Add Data Source

1. Go to Configuration > Data Sources
2. Click "Add data source"
3. Select type (Prometheus, InfluxDB, etc.)
4. Configure connection
5. Click "Save & Test"

API Commands

# List data sources
curl -X GET \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <api_key>" \
  http://localhost:3000/api/datasources

# Add data source
curl -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <api_key>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Prometheus",
    "type": "prometheus",
    "url": "http://localhost:9090",
    "access": "proxy"
  }' \
  http://localhost:3000/api/datasources

# Delete data source
curl -X DELETE \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <api_key>" \
  http://localhost:3000/api/datasources/uid/<uid>

Dashboards

Create Dashboard

1. Go to Create > Dashboard
2. Add panels with visualization
3. Configure queries
4. Set up variables
5. Save dashboard

Import Dashboard

1. Go to Create > Import
2. Enter dashboard ID or upload JSON
3. Select data source
4. Click Import

API Commands

# List dashboards
curl -X GET \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <api_key>" \
  http://localhost:3000/api/search?query=dashboard

# Get dashboard
curl -X GET \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <api_key>" \
  http://localhost:3000/api/dashboards/uid/<uid>

# Create dashboard
curl -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <api_key>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "dashboard": {
      "title": "My Dashboard",
      "panels": []
    },
    "overwrite": true
  }' \
  http://localhost:3000/api/dashboards/db

# Delete dashboard
curl -X DELETE \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <api_key>" \
  http://localhost:3000/api/dashboards/uid/<uid>

Panels

Panel Types

TYPE	DESCRIPTION
Graph	Time series visualization
Stat	Single metric visualization
Gauge	Metric with threshold
Table	Tabular data
Bar Chart	Categorical data
Pie Chart	Distribution
Heatmap	Time series density
Geomap	Geographic data
Logs	Log visualization
Trace	Distributed tracing

Panel Queries

Prometheus

# Rate
rate(http_requests_total[5m])

# Sum by label
sum(rate(http_requests_total[5m])) by (method)

# Average
avg(rate(http_requests_total[5m]))

# With filters
rate(http_requests_total{status="200"}[5m])

InfluxDB

SELECT mean(value) FROM "cpu" WHERE $timeFilter GROUP BY time($__interval)

Loki

{job="myapp"} |= "error"

Variables

Query Variable

1. Go to Dashboard Settings > Variables
2. Click "Add variable"
3. Select type: Query
4. Select data source
5. Enter query
6. Configure options

Interval Variable

1. Go to Dashboard Settings > Variables
2. Add variable
3. Select type: Interval
4. Add intervals: 30s, 1m, 5m, 10m, 30m

Custom Variable

1. Go to Dashboard Settings > Variables
2. Add variable
3. Select type: Custom
4. Add values: dev, staging, prod

Using Variables

# In queries
rate(metric{instance="$instance"}[5m])

# In panel titles
Requests for $instance

Annotations

Add Annotation

1. Go to Dashboard Settings > Annotations
2. Add annotation query
3. Configure query
4. Set tags and colors

API Commands

# List annotations
curl -X GET \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <api_key>" \
  http://localhost:3000/api/annotations

# Create annotation
curl -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <api_key>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "dashboardId": 1,
    "time": 1640995200000,
    "timeEnd": 1640995800000,
    "tags": ["deployment"],
    "text": "Deployed version 1.0.0"
  }' \
  http://localhost:3000/api/annotations

Alerts

Create Alert Rule

1. Edit panel
2. Go to "Alert" tab
3. Set condition
4. Set threshold
5. Configure notification
6. Save dashboard

Alert Notification Channels

1. Go to Alerting > Notification channels
2. Add channel
3. Select type (Email, Slack, PagerDuty, etc.)
4. Configure settings
5. Test notification

Alerting

Alert Rule Syntax

# Condition
avg(metric) > threshold

# Reduce
avg()

# Evaluate every
every 1m

# For duration
for 5m

Folders

Create Folder

1. Go to Dashboards > Manage
2. Create folder
3. Add dashboards to folder

API Commands

# List folders
curl -X GET \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <api_key>" \
  http://localhost:3000/api/folders

# Create folder
curl -X POST \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <api_key>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "title": "My Folder"
  }' \
  http://localhost:3000/api/folders

Organizations

Create Organization

1. Go to Configuration > Users
2. Create new organization
3. Invite users

Switch Organization

1. Click user menu
2. Select organization

Users & Teams

Create Team

1. Go to Configuration > Teams
2. Create team
3. Add members

Manage Permissions

1. Go to Configuration > Users
2. Edit user
3. Assign roles: Viewer, Editor, Admin

Plugins

Install Plugin

1. Go to Configuration > Plugins
2. Find plugin
3. Click "Install"

API Commands

# List plugins
curl http://localhost:3000/api/plugins

# Install plugin
curl -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "grafana-piechart-panel",
    "version": "1.3.0"
  }' \
  http://localhost:3000/api/plugins/install

Provisioning

Datasource Provisioning (INI)

[datasources]
[datasources.prometheus]
type = prometheus
url = http://localhost:9090

Dashboard Provisioning (YAML)

apiVersion: 1

datasources:
  - name: Prometheus
    type: prometheus
    access: proxy
    url: http://localhost:9090

dashboards:
  - name: 'My Dashboard'
    folder: ''
    type: file
    options:
      path: /var/lib/grafana/dashboards

Snapshots

Create Snapshot

1. Go to Share > Snapshot
2. Set expiration
3. Create snapshot
4. Share URL

Export & Import

Export Dashboard

1. Go to Dashboard settings
2. Click "Export JSON"
3. Save file

Import Dashboard

1. Go to Create > Import
2. Upload JSON file
3. Configure data source
4. Click Import

Best Practices

• Use folders to organize dashboards
• Use variables for dynamic dashboards
• Set up alerting for critical metrics
• Use annotations to mark events
• Provision configuration as code
• Regularly review and update dashboards
• Use appropriate panel types for data
• Set up user roles and permissions
• Use SSL/TLS for production
• Backup Grafana configuration and dashboards
• Monitor Grafana itself

TIP

Use Grafana's Explore feature for ad-hoc querying before building dashboards.