What is Grafana?
Grafana open source software enables you to query, visualize, alert on, and explore your metrics, logs, and traces wherever they are stored.
Grafana OSS provides you with tools to turn your time-series database (TSDB) data into insightful graphs and visualizations.
The Grafana OSS plugin framework also enables you to connect other data sources like NoSQL/SQL databases, ticketing tools like Jira or ServiceNow, and CI/CD tooling like GitLab.
What are the features of Grafana?
Here are some features of Grafana:
Visualization
Grafana uses panels as the basic building block for visualization. Panels can contain graphs, tables, heatmaps, freetext, and Singlestat. They can also integrate with community-created and proprietary plugins.
Dashboards
Grafana dashboards automate the collection, management, and display of data. They allow teams to visualize and move among all of their data in one place.
Data sources
Grafana supports a wide range of data sources, including popular time series databases like Graphite and SQL databases like MySQL. It also has built-in support for cloud monitoring vendors like Amazon Cloudwatch and Microsoft Azure.
Customization
Grafana is highly customizable and provides real-time monitoring capabilities.
Infrastructure monitoring
Grafana can be used to monitor the health and performance of infrastructure components such as servers, databases, and networks.
Application monitoring
Grafana can be used to monitor application performance metrics such as response time, error rates, and throughput.
Why Grafana?
- Grafana allows you to query, visualize, alert on, and understand your metrics no matter where they are stored. Create, explore, and share beautiful dashboards with your team and foster a data-driven culture.
What type of monitoring can be done via Grafana?
Grafana can be used for the following types of monitoring:
Application monitoring
Grafana can monitor application performance metrics like response time, throughput, and error rates.
Log monitoring
Grafana can analyze logs and create visualizations of log data to identify anomalies, patterns, and trends.
Cloud monitoring
Grafana supports monitoring of cloud services and resources. This includes monitoring databases, storage, compute instances, and other cloud-specific metrics.
System monitoring
Grafana can monitor OS level statistics like CPU load, memory usage, disk usage, and network stat.
Time series analysis
Grafana is a valuable tool for assessing error frequencies, categorizing error types, understanding contextual scenarios, and tracking user behavior.
What databases work with Grafana?
- Grafana uses an embedded sqlite3 database to store users, dashboards, and other persistent data by default. For high availability, you must use a shared database to store this data. This shared database can be either MySQL or Postgres.
What are metrics and visualizations in Grafana?
In Grafana, metrics are numerical data points that are collected over time to measure a system's performance.
Visualizations are graphical representations of these metrics, such as graphs, tables, and gauges.
What is the difference between Grafana vs Prometheus?
- Prometheus collects rich metrics and provides a powerful querying language; Grafana transforms metrics into meaningful visualizations.