GrafanaPoC

Overview

Proof of concept for displaying application performance monitoring information in Grafana Grafana normally reads information from a data source such as a timeseries nosql database like Prometheus. This demonstrates how to use Grafana with the SimpleJson data source.

The data source has to expose the following endpoints:

• / should return 200 ok. Used for "Test connection" on the datasource config page.
• /search used by the find metric options on the query tab in panels.
• /query should return metrics based on input.
• /annotations should return annotations.

It appears that statsd information can be displayed with InfluxDB or Prometheus

Setup

Setup Node

• Clone this repo
• Install node v7.8 or higher via nvm
• npm install

Grafana Docker Install

• Install Docker for example Docker for Mac
• Run the image with plugins: docker run -p 3000:3000 -e "GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=grafana-piechart-panel,grafana-simple-json-datasource" grafana/grafana'
• The first time you run the above, it will automatically download the Grafana image from dockerhub

Startup

Setup Data Source

• npm start starts the service on port 9000
• Run Grafana as per the above docker run command
• Navigate to localhost:3000 in a browser
• login as admin/admin
• Add data source
  • name: simplejson
  • type: SimpleJson
  • url: http://localhost:9000
  • proxy: direct

Import Dashboard

• Click top left orange icon
• Dashboards -> Import
• Upload JSON file: graphana/home-*.json
• Select datasource from dropdown: simplejson
• Click Import button
• Enjoy!

Reference Info

Feel free to skip this, this information not needed but kept here for reference.

Grafana Local Install

• brew update; brew install grafana See Grafana Installation instructions for more details.
• Either run Grafana via launchd and restart at login: brew services start grafana
• Or run Grafana locally: grafana-server --config=/usr/local/etc/grafana/grafana.ini --homepath /usr/local/share/grafana cfg:default.paths.logs=/usr/local/var/log/grafana cfg:default.paths.data=/usr/local/var/lib/grafana cfg:default.paths.plugins=/usr/local/var/lib/grafana/plugins
• Documentation on installing plugins: https://github.com/grafana/grafana-docker#installing-plugins-for-grafana-3

Grafana Plugins we use

• Piechart Plugin: grafana-cli plugins install grafana-piechart-panel
• SimpleJson panel: grafana-cli plugins install grafana-simple-json-datasource

Other Grafana Plugins of interest

• Worldmap panel: grafana-cli plugins install grafana-worldmap-panel
• Google calendar plugin to show calendar events as annotations: grafana-cli plugins install mtanda-google-calendar-datasource
• Histogram panel: grafana-cli plugins install mtanda-histogram-panel

Dashboard Configuration

This is not needed unless the JSON file is not available for import

• New dashboard: Home
• New Graph
  • Title: Error Count by Hour
  • DataSource: SimpleJson
  • Metric type: timeseries
  • Metric name: error-report
  • Display draw mode: bars
  • Time range start: 2017-03-08 17:00:00
  • Time range end: 2017-03-09 17:00:00
• New Pie Chart:
  • Title: Error count by Device
  • DataSource: SimpleJson
  • Metric name: device-report
  • Legend show legend
  • Legend position: on graph
  • Legend font size: 120%
  • Legend values: on
  • Legend show percentage: on
• Save dashboard and star it