Grafana

Grafana is a tool to generate graphs and dashboards.

Configuration

See the documentation on configuring Grafana at: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/setup-grafana/configure-grafana/#override-configuration-with-environment-variables

Configuring Grafana Docker image

The Grafana configs on the Docker image are typically set using environment variables rather than using the configuration grafana.ini file. Environment variables for Grafana are all prefixed with GF_ followed by its section and key name all in uppercase.

Here are some common environment variables that are set on Grafana.

Setting	Environment Variable	Example value
URL	GF_SERVER_ROOT_URL	GF_SERVER_ROOT_URL=https://grafana.example.com/
Name	GF_DEFAULT_INSTANCE_NAME	GF_DEFAULT_INSTANCE_NAME=my-instance
Updates & Telemetry	GF_SERVER_CHECK_FOR_UPDATES GF_SERVER_REPORTING_ENABLED	GF_SERVER_CHECK_FOR_UPDATES=false GF_SERVER_REPORTING_ENABLED=false
Plugins to install	GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS	GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=grafana-simple-json-datasource,https://github.com/cloudspout/cloudspout-button-panel/releases/download/7.0.23/cloudspout-button-panel.zip;cloudspout-button-panel,grafana-piechart-panel,https://github.com/grafana/piechart-panel/releases/download/v1.6.4/grafana-piechart-panel-1.6.4.zip;grafana-piechart-panelPlugins are semicolon delimited. Each plugin has a name and URL separated by a comma.
LDAP	GF_AUTH_LDAP_ENABLED GF_AUTH_LDAP_CONFIG_FILE	GF_AUTH_LDAP_ENABLED=true GF_AUTH_LDAP_CONFIG_FILE=/etc/grafana/ldap.toml
SMTP	GF_SMTP_ENABLED GF_SMTP_HOST GF_SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS	GF_SMTP_ENABLED=trueGF_SMTP_HOST=smtp:25 GF_SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS=grafana@grafana.example.com

Random Notes

Pie Graph using MySQL

With the following query, I am able to generate a two column result set which I want to put into a pie graph.

SELECT requested_cpu, COUNT(requested_cpu) FROM `jobs` GROUP BY requested_cpu ORDER BY `COUNT(requested_cpu)` DESC

However, the Grafana Pie Graph plugin requires the result to be a time series. To work around this, add the timeseries with the current timestamp and ensure that the metric is a char type.

SELECT now() as time_sec, COUNT(requested_cpu) as `value`, CONVERT(requested_cpu, char) as metric 
FROM `jobs` WHERE   $__timeFilter(started) 
GROUP BY requested_cpu

Custom Colors in Pie Graph

Specify custom colors for each series by editing the JSON data directly. There should be an aliasColors field which needs to be populated. For example:

"aliasColors": { "1 min to 10 min": "#3b7dd0", "1 to 5 hours": "#e8cb2a", "10 min to 1 hour": "#73bf69", "5 to 24 hours": "#e8912a", "Over 24 hours": "#b21c1c", "Under 1 min": "#5fc5ff" },

Grafana Pie Graph with custom colors

Ordering Series

When making a line graph, I wanted to order series in a specific order. The best way I found was to just have multiple queries selecting specific series in a particular order.

Tips

Reducing a long chain of conditions

Are you writing Influx queries like:

SELECT something FROM somewhere
WHERE thing = 'that' OR thing = 'it' OR thing = 'those' OR ....

Why not group them with pattern matching instead:

SELECT something FROM somewhere
WHERE thing =~ /^(that|it|those|...)$/

See also

• Variables - https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/dashboards/variables/variable-syntax/