Monitoring & Logging: Grafana Dashboards in Kubernetes

1. Introduction

Grafana is an open-source analytics and monitoring solution that enables you to query, visualize, and understand your metrics no matter where they are stored. In a Kubernetes environment, Grafana can be used to monitor the health and performance of your clusters and applications.

2. Key Concepts

3. Setup

To set up Grafana in a Kubernetes environment, you need to follow these steps:

1. Install Grafana using Helm:

   helm repo add grafana https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts
   helm install my-grafana grafana/grafana

2. Verify the installation:

   kubectl get pods -n default -l app.kubernetes.io/name=grafana

3. Access Grafana dashboard:

   Port-forward to access Grafana UI:

   kubectl port-forward svc/my-grafana 3000:80

   Now visit http://localhost:3000

4. Creating Dashboards

Creating dashboards in Grafana involves the following steps:

1. Log in to Grafana using default credentials (admin/admin).
2. Click on the "+" icon in the left sidebar and select "Dashboard".
3. Choose "Add a new panel" to create visualizations.
4. Select your data source (e.g., Prometheus) and write your query.
5. Customize the visualization type and panel settings.
6. Save your dashboard.

5. Best Practices

• Use consistent naming conventions for your dashboards and panels.
• Group related metrics together in a single dashboard.
• Regularly review and update your dashboards to remove obsolete panels.
• Utilize annotations to mark important events on your graphs.
• Limit the amount of data displayed to enhance performance.

6. FAQ