Create Grafana Dashboard Guide

This document explains how to create Grafana Dashboard via GrafanaDashboard CR powered by Grafana operator. In this way there is no need to configure/import it via web UI. Now, developers can ship new dashboards in any namespace and deploy them via GitOps. If Dashboard definition/JSON is invalid, the dashboard will not appear in Grafana web UI.

Prerequisite

Grafana should be up and running. You should be able to find it under Workload Monitoring category in your Forecastle link.

Instructions

Create GrafanaDashboard definition

You can choose any existing namespace. The label grafanaDashboard: grafana-operator is required for Grafana Operator to discover the dashboard. The JSON string with the dashboard contents is placed in the json section. Check the official documentation for details on JSON Model. You can create a dashboard via web UI first, and then export the dashboard JSON to define a GrafanaDashboard CR (Custom Resource). If the JSON is invalid, the dashboard will not appear in Grafana web UI. Below is a sample GrafanaDashboard CR YAML.

```yaml
apiVersion: integreatly.org/v1alpha1
kind: GrafanaDashboard
metadata:
  name: grafana-dashboard-example
  namespace: test-ns
  labels:
    grafanaDashboard: grafana-operator
spec:
  json: |-
    {
      "annotations": {
        "list": [
          {
            "builtIn": 1,
            "datasource": "-- Grafana --",
            "enable": true,
            "hide": true,
            "iconColor": "rgba(0, 211, 255, 1)",
            "name": "Annotations & Alerts",
            "type": "dashboard"
          }
        ]
      },
      "editable": true,
      "gnetId": null,
      "graphTooltip": 0,
      "id": null,
      "links": [],
      "panels": [
        {
          "aliasColors": {},
          "bars": false,
          "dashLength": 10,
          "dashes": false,
          "datasource": null,
          "fieldConfig": {
            "defaults": {},
            "overrides": []
          },
          "fill": 1,
          "fillGradient": 0,
          "gridPos": {
            "h": 9,
            "w": 12,
            "x": 0,
            "y": 0
          },
          "hiddenSeries": false,
          "id": 2,
          "legend": {
            "avg": false,
            "current": false,
            "max": false,
            "min": false,
            "show": true,
            "total": false,
            "values": false
          },
          "lines": true,
          "linewidth": 1,
          "nullPointMode": "null",
          "options": {
            "alertThreshold": true
          },
          "percentage": false,
          "pluginVersion": "7.5.11",
          "pointradius": 2,
          "points": false,
          "renderer": "flot",
          "seriesOverrides": [],
          "spaceLength": 10,
          "stack": false,
          "steppedLine": false,
          "thresholds": [],
          "timeFrom": null,
          "timeRegions": [],
          "timeShift": null,
          "title": "Panel Title",
          "tooltip": {
            "shared": true,
            "sort": 0,
            "value_type": "individual"
          },
          "type": "graph",
          "xaxis": {
            "buckets": null,
            "mode": "time",
            "name": null,
            "show": true,
            "values": []
          },
          "yaxes": [
            {
              "format": "short",
              "label": null,
              "logBase": 1,
              "max": null,
              "min": null,
              "show": true
            },
            {
              "format": "short",
              "label": null,
              "logBase": 1,
              "max": null,
              "min": null,
              "show": true
            }
          ],
          "yaxis": {
            "align": false,
            "alignLevel": null
          }
        }
      ],
      "schemaVersion": 27,
      "style": "dark",
      "tags": [],
      "templating": {
        "list": []
      },
      "time": {
        "from": "now-6h",
        "to": "now"
      },
      "timepicker": {},
      "timezone": "",
      "title": "New dashboard",
      "uid": null,
      "version": 0
    }
```

Apply GrafanaDashbaord CR to your cluster, manually or via GitOps way
View the dashboard via Grafana web UI
Under stakater-workload-monitoring project, find the URL to Grafana through Cluster menu [Networking]->[Routes]
Open Grafana web UI, and go to [Dashboards]->[Manage] to view Dashboards management page
Your dashboard will be put in a folder named after the namespace that you specified in GrafanaDashboard definition. The following is an example.

Application chart

A template for installing GrafanaDashboard is provided by application chart. You are able to specify configuration via values.yaml and install dashboards on cluster. The following is an example.

grafanaDashboard:
  enabled: true
  additionalLabels:
    test-label: chart
  annotations: 
    test-annoation: chart
  contents:
    dashboard-test-name-1: 
      json: |-
        {
          ...
        }