Best of Grafana Labs — 2024

  1. 1
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    Visualize GitHub repos, projects, and more

    The GitHub data source plugin for Grafana helps organizations visualize key metrics and data from GitHub, making it easier to monitor repositories, pull requests, issues, and more. Key features include support for different query types, use of variables and macros for dynamic queries, annotation capabilities, and caching for improved performance. The plugin is maintained by Grafana Labs and supports both free and enterprise GitHub accounts. Recent updates have added GitHub App authentication for enhanced security.

  2. 2
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    How Japan's space agency used Grafana to monitor its first moon landing in real time

    Japan's space agency JAXA successfully conducted its first lunar landing on January 19, 2024. Using Grafana for real-time monitoring, JAXA tracked critical SLIM spacecraft functions like navigation and heater status. Satoshi Nakahira showcased the dashboards at GrafanaCON 2024, highlighting their integration with InfluxDB for enhanced observability. The dashboards helped monitor power, navigation, and landing maneuvers, providing visually impressive and easily editable insights that were crucial during the mission.

  3. 3
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    Container monitoring with Grafana: Helpful resources to get started

    Containers enable consistent application performance across different environments and are often organized into microservices for better efficiency and scalability. Grafana is a powerful tool for monitoring these containerized environments, offering capabilities to visualize, query, and analyze metrics and logs. Comprehensive documentation is available for deploying Grafana with Docker, Kubernetes, and Helm Charts, covering configuration, customization, and troubleshooting best practices. The community is also invited to contribute feedback and join the Grafana Champions program to support wider documentation efforts.

  4. 4
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    Prometheus 3.0 and OpenTelemetry: a practical guide to storing and querying OTel data

    Prometheus 3.0 aims to improve integration with OpenTelemetry by addressing challenges such as resource attributes, UTF-8 support, and temporalities. The Prometheus 3.0 release includes features like promoting resource attributes to metric labels, a new `info` PromQL function, and stable OTLP support for easier data ingestion and querying. Users can also utilize the delta to cumulative processor in OTel Collector for better data handling. Future developments will focus on enhancing interoperability and scalability.

  5. 5
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    How to instrument your Python application using OpenTelemetry

    Learn how to instrument your Python application using OpenTelemetry and visualize the data in Grafana Cloud's Application Observability. Follow the steps to create a Python application and configure it for OpenTelemetry.

  6. 6
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    Grafana dashboards are now powered by Scenes: big changes, same UI

    Grafana has migrated its dashboard architecture to use the Grafana Scenes library, making the dashboards more stable, dynamic, and flexible while maintaining the familiar UI. This change enables several improvements, such as a new `Edit` mode, fixed positioning for template variables and time picker, faster PDF export times for enterprise users, and additional features like the `timezone` parameter in URLs and Kiosk mode enhancements. Despite the significant under-the-hood changes, users will experience a consistent interface with enhanced performance and new functionalities.

  7. 7
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    How to use Prometheus to efficiently detect anomalies at scale

    Discover how an effective anomaly detection framework was built using Prometheus and PromQL. Learn about setting up average and standard deviation recording rules, tuning parameters like time windows and multipliers, and addressing challenges such as extreme outliers, low sensitivity, and seasonality. The reusable framework works for any metric and can integrate with your existing Prometheus setup to enhance incident investigation and root-cause analysis.

  8. 8
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    Monitoring Kubernetes: Why traditional techniques aren't enough

    Kubernetes offers significant advantages for large-scale deployment and management of applications, but traditional monitoring techniques fall short. Observability now leverages out-of-the-box solutions like Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenCost to facilitate proactive monitoring, cost management, and better resource allocation. The Kubernetes ecosystem makes it easier for teams to support application performance, though engineers must still be vigilant about costs and reliability.

  9. 9
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    Monitor these Kubernetes signals to help rightsize your fleet

    Organizations using Kubernetes should focus on optimizing resource usage for both cost efficiency and environmental sustainability. Key indicators to monitor for under-provisioning include high CPU or memory utilization, high disk I/O, network latency, and frequent pod evictions. Over-provisioning can be detected through low resource utilization and high costs without proportional usage. Implementing best practices like regular monitoring, autoscaling, and setting resource quotas can help in maintaining an optimal balance.

  10. 10
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    Better root cause analysis: Mastering alert insights with the new central history timeline

    Grafana Alerting's new history feature in version 11.2 offers a comprehensive view of alert state transitions for better root cause analysis. The feature includes a filters section, an events chart, and an events table, helping users identify patterns and diagnose issues quickly. Designed for DevOps engineers, system administrators, and SRE teams, it enhances incident response strategies by providing detailed insights into alert rule state changes.

  11. 11
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    How to set up Grafana Mimir using Ansible

    This post provides a comprehensive guide on setting up Grafana Mimir using Ansible. It covers the prerequisites, installing the Grafana Ansible collection, creating an inventory file, using the Mimir Ansible role, and configuring Mimir for high availability. Additionally, it explains how to check metrics in Grafana to ensure a successful setup.

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    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    Getting started with Grafana: best practices to design your first dashboard

    Observability is crucial for understanding and optimizing complex systems, and Grafana dashboards are a powerful tool for achieving this. Key principles for effective dashboard design include knowing your audience, leveraging visual hierarchies, and selecting appropriate metrics. Techniques like the RED and USE methods can help prioritize which metrics to display. Always iterate your designs based on feedback and changing requirements. For more detailed guidance, check out the provided on-demand webinar and additional resources.

  13. 13
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    Industrial IoT visualization: Why United Manufacturing Hub chose Grafana to power its IIoT platform

    United Manufacturing Hub (UMH) has chosen Grafana for its industrial IoT (IIoT) platform due to its flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and ease of use. Unlike traditional industrial tools, Grafana offers visually compelling dashboards and an extensive online community for support. Integrating seamlessly with TimescaleDB, it allows for real-time data visualization from various sources. While Grafana cannot directly interface with industrial controllers, workarounds exist to facilitate this communication. UMH also leverages Grafana Cloud for monitoring internal systems.

  14. 14
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    Java observability with OpenTelemetry, Grafana Cloud, and Digma.ai

    Modern observability tools like OpenTelemetry and platforms such as Grafana Cloud are making it easier for developers to proactively monitor their application's performance. By integrating these tools with specialized solutions like Digma.ai, developers can shorten the feedback loop, identifying and addressing issues more swiftly. The post describes how to connect a Spring Boot application to Grafana Cloud and configure Digma.ai for continuous feedback within the IDE, enhancing the development lifecycle with runtime code analysis.

  15. 15
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    Grafana's Prometheus libraries: How we built libraries to create a truly vendor-neutral data source

    Grafana Labs has decoupled its Prometheus data source from Grafana, enabling the creation of vendor-neutral data sources. This update includes a dedicated Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus plugin while maintaining core functionalities and stability. The change aims to foster better observability and reusability in the open-source community. Key principles like DRY and modularity were emphasized, and significant efforts ensured the code's independence and scalability. The project required extensive internal collaboration, POCs, and CI/CD enhancements to achieve this milestone.

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    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·1y

    Grafana community dashboards: Memorable use cases of 2024

    The post highlights creative and innovative ways Grafana dashboards are being used in 2024, touching on projects such as monitoring traffic, identifying defects in steel alloys, parenting, home automation, and tracking bird songs. It also celebrates winners of the Grafana community Golden Grot Awards and offers insights into how organizations are leveraging Grafana for various purposes including space missions, manufacturing, and retail operations.

  17. 17
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    Edit your Git-based Grafana dashboards locally

    Editing Grafana dashboards locally can be managed similarly to code using tools like Grizzly. This guide provides steps to configure Grizzly and use it for editing and reviewing Grafana dashboards before publication by leveraging version control, IDEs, and CI/CD pipelines. Examples in various programming languages demonstrate how to utilize Grizzly to preview and adjust dashboards efficiently.

  18. 18
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    CI/CD observability: A rich, new opportunity for OpenTelemetry

    Continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) are central to modern software delivery, but observability in these processes remains limited. OpenTelemetry (OTel) is changing this by enabling deeper visibility throughout the whole CI/CD pipeline, from building and testing to deploying. Shifting observability focus 'left' helps detect and address issues early, increasing efficiency and reducing downtime. The introduction of new semantic conventions and Special Interest Groups (SIGs) for CI/CD observability marks a significant step forward in this area.

  19. 19
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    5 useful transformations you should know to get the most out of Grafana

    Discover five useful transformations in Grafana that can help you better understand your data, including grouping data, organizing fields by name, filtering data by value, sorting data, and partitioning data by values.

  20. 20
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    How to use OpenTelemetry and Grafana Alloy to convert delta to cumulative at scale

    Migrating to a Prometheus-based ecosystem with Grafana Alloy, which integrates OpenTelemetry, makes handling metrics easier, especially when converting delta metrics to cumulative ones. This post details the algorithm used for this conversion and outlines the load balancing and container setup necessary for scalable deployment. It also mentions recent updates to the OpenTelemetry Collector, making the process more efficient and scalable.

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    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    Performance testing with Grafana k6 and GitHub Actions

    Integrate performance testing into your development process using Grafana k6 and GitHub Actions. k6 is an open-source tool for load testing APIs and websites, while GitHub Actions allows for custom CI/CD workflows. Create and configure test scripts, define service level objectives (SLOs), and set up GitHub workflows to run tests locally or in Grafana Cloud. Additionally, utilize k6 extensions and adjust workflows for different operating systems or scheduled builds for comprehensive performance monitoring.

  22. 22
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    How to customize your Loki deployment with Ansible

    Discover how to deploy Grafana Loki using Ansible, including both default and customized configurations. Learn about different deployment methods, the Ansible Loki Role, and how to configure Grafana to explore your logs. The role supports major Linux distributions and offers flexibility for various environments. The post also provides links to further documentation and examples of dashboards using Loki.

  23. 23
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    How to monitor your kids' chores: An introduction to Grafana-powered parenting

    Learn how to use Grafana to monitor your kids' chores and automate notifications for their room cleaning progress.

  24. 24
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·1y

    OpenTelemetry: past, present, and future

    Juraci Paixão Kröhling and Daniel Gomez Blanco from the OpenTelemetry Governance Committee discuss the framework's ability to instrument, collect, process, and transport telemetry data in a standard, vendor-neutral format. They highlight its importance in cloud-native systems for unifying metrics, logs, and traces to provide better insights. Strategies for choosing the right telemetry, the challenges of adoption, and the latest developments in OpenTelemetry, like profiling and refactoring resource attributes, are explored.

  25. 25
    Article
    Avatar of grafanaGrafana Labs·2y

    Key Prometheus concepts every Grafana user should know

    Prometheus is a robust monitoring framework, far beyond just a time series database, offering features like metric scraping, powerful querying (PromQL), alerting, and service discovery. Key components include client libraries for instrumentation, the node exporter for OS-level metrics, and general exporters for diverse sources. PromQL enables complex queries and supports recording rules for optimizing data retrieval and storage. Prometheus excels in dynamic environments, adapting well with Grafana for enhanced data visualization. Understanding these capabilities, especially through resources like 'Prometheus Up & Running,' can significantly improve your observability practices.

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