Grafana Cheatsheet
Grafana Cheatsheet - Monitoring & Visualization Guide
This cheatsheet provides quick reference for using Grafana for monitoring and data visualization. It covers essential aspects from dashboards and tutorials to specific datasource configurations and query examples.
Grafana Overview and Navigation
Datasource Configurations
CloudWatch Datasource
Elasticsearch Datasource
MySQL Datasource
Prometheus Datasource
Loki Datasource
Dashboards
Discover pre-built dashboards to accelerate your monitoring setup.
Tutorials and Resources
Explore helpful tutorials and documentation to deepen your Grafana knowledge.
Datasource: CloudWatch
Configure and query AWS CloudWatch metrics within Grafana.
Variables for CloudWatch
Utilize CloudWatch variables to dynamically filter and select data in your dashboards.
Documentation:
Overview:
The Name field allows you to use it as a variable, example:
Name: region
Type: Query
Label: Region
Query: regions()
This will display "Region" in Grafana, and you can use a variable $region to select the value from the Region selector.
AWS Regions:
Query: regions()
AutoScaling Group:
Query: dimension_values($region,AWS/EC2,CPUUtilization,AutoScalingGroupName)
EC2 Instance Tag Names:
Name: instancename
Query: ec2_instance_attribute($region, Tags.Name, {})
EC2 Instance ID from Tag Name:
Name: instanceid
Query: ec2_instance_attribute($region, InstanceId, {"tag:Name": ["$instancename"]})
EC2 InstanceId from Tag Name (filtered):
Query: ec2_instance_attribute(eu-west-1, Tags.Name, {"tag:Name":["prod-*"]})
EC2 InstanceId from Tag Name (filtered):
Query: ec2_instance_attribute(eu-west-1, InstanceId, {"tag:ASG":["my-app-asg"]})
EBS VolumeId from InstanceId:
Query: ebs_volume_ids($region, $instanceid)
ECS Cluster Name:
Query: dimension_values($region,AWS/ECS,CPUUtilization,ClusterName)
ECS Service Name:
Query: dimension_values($region,AWS/ECS,CPUUtilization,ServiceName)
RDS Cluster Name:
Query: dimension_values($region,AWS/RDS,CPUUtilization,DBClusterIdentifier)
RDS Instance Name:
Query: dimension_values($region,AWS/RDS,CPUUtilization,DBInstanceIdentifier)
CloudWatch Logs, LogGroup Names:
Query: dimension_values($region,AWS/Logs, IncomingBytes,LogGroupName)
CloudWatch Queries
Leverage CloudWatch Logs Query Syntax for advanced log analysis.
Using CloudWatch Logs Query Syntax:
fields @timestamp, @message, @log, @logStream
| sort @timestamp desc
| limit 30
Datasource: Elasticsearch
Integrate Elasticsearch for log analysis and time-series data visualization.
Variables for Elasticsearch
Create dynamic variables for Elasticsearch queries.
Domain Name:
{"find": "terms", "field": "domain_name.keyword"}
Domain Name (Filtered Results):
{"find": "terms", "field": "domain_name.keyword", "query": "domain_name: *.mydomain.com"}
2 Variables, ALB and Domain Name (domain name results filtered based on the alb that you select / should be in correct order):
alb_name:
{"find": "terms", "field": "alb_name.keyword"}
domain_name:
{"find": "terms", "field": "domain_name.keyword", "query": "domain_name: *.mydomain.com AND alb_name:$alb_name.keyword"}
Datasource: MySQL
Connect Grafana to MySQL databases for data visualization.
Variables for MySQL
Define variables for dynamic MySQL queries.
Name: status
Label: Status
Type: Query
Datasource: MySQL
Query: SELECT status FROM mytable
To use a regex to filter out any NULLs:
# this will only return results with letters/numbers
/([a-zA-Z0-9\.]+)/
Queries for MySQL
Examples of Grafana queries for MySQL panels.
Gauge:
SELECT
country,
SUM(cnt) AS total,
NOW() AS time
FROM mytable
WHERE status = ${status}
GROUP BY country
Bar Gauge:
SELECT NOW() AS time, count(*) as cnt, CONCAT(name,', ',surname,', ',country) AS entity FROM mytable
WHERE status = "PENDING"
AND name REGEXP '${name:pipe}'
AND surname REGEXP '${surname:pipe}'
AND country REGEXP '${country:pipe}'
GROUP BY CONCAT(name,', ',surname,', ',country)
Table Panel:
SELECT name, surname, country, status, pending_time from mytable
WHERE status = "PENDING"
AND name REGEXP '${name:pipe}'
AND surname REGEXP '${surname:pipe}'
AND country REGEXP '${country:pipe}'
Prometheus: Datasource
Integrate Prometheus for time-series monitoring data.
Variables for Prometheus
Create dynamic variables for Prometheus queries.
Basics
Example: Define a jobs variable based on the up metric.
up{cluster_name="cluster-a",instance="1.1.1.1:443",job="container-metrics"}
up{cluster_name="cluster-b=",instance="1.1.1.1:443",job="node-metrics"}
Add a variable with the following configuration:
Name: jobs
Label: Jobs
Query: label_values(up, job)
Datasource: Prometheus
This will produce container-metrics and node-metrics. In your dashboard query, you can select them using:
up{job=~"$job"}
Filtered Variables
Example: Display jobs only from cluster-b and name the variable cluster_b_jobs.
label: cluster_b_jobs
label_values(up{cluster_name="cluster-b"}, job)
You can use this variable to filter further, e.g., label_values(metric{jobs=~"$cluster_b_jobs"}, some_label). This is useful for getting environments and then filtering on resources.
Regex Filtering
Example: Filter job results to display only those matching a pattern.
Current job results:
qa/nginx
qa/app
qa/app-syslog
qa/app-deploy
prod/app
prod/app-syslog
prod/app-deploy
To display {env}/app, use the following query and regex:
Query:
label_values(labels, job)
Regex:
/^(.*app)/
This results in:
qa/app
prod/app
To get everything after the /:
/.*(.*app.*).*/
Which will result in:
app
app-syslog
app-deploy
For an example where you want to return everything up until the numbers:
ecs-prod-app-10-container-12345
ecs-dev-app-12-container-12345
You can use:
/^(.*?)-[0-9]/
Which will result in:
ecs-prod-app
ecs-dev-app
For Kubernetes namespaces:
Name: container
Label: container
Query: kube_pod_container_info{namespace="$namespace"}
Regex: /.*container="([^"]*).*/
Datasource: Prometheus
For Kubernetes containers:
Name: namespace
Label: namespace
Query: query_result(kube_namespace_labels)
Regex: /.*namespace="([^"]*).*/
Datasource: Prometheus
Queries for Prometheus
Explore common Prometheus query patterns for Grafana panels.
Tables for Prometheus
Utilize data links in Grafana to create interactive tables and link to external resources.
Using datalinks in Grafana, to parse values in your url you can use $__cell_0 and if you need to do some formatting you can use ${__cell_3:raw}, like below:
https://gitlab.com/${__cell_3:raw}/-/pipelines/$__cell_7
Resources:
Loki Datasource
Integrate Loki for log aggregation and querying.
Variables for Loki
Create dynamic variables for Loki queries.
Basics: Jobs
Example: Define a jobs variable for Loki logs.
label_values({job=~".+"}, job)
Add a variable with the following configuration:
Name: job
Label: Jobs
Query: label_values({job=~".+"}, job)
Datasource: Loki
This will produce values like systemd-logs and server-logs. In your dashboard query, you can select them using:
{job=~"$job"}
Basics: Name
Example: Define a name variable for Loki logs.
label_values({job="server-logs"}, name)
Add a variable with the following configuration:
Name: name
Label: Name
Query: label_values({job="server-logs"}, name)
Datasource: Loki
This will produce values like web-server-01 and web-server-02. In your dashboard query, you can select them using:
{name=~"$name"}
Loki Queries
Explore common Loki query patterns for log analysis.