Grafana

Grafana is an open-source observability platform that provides monitoring and visual analytics for application performance. Grafana allows you to visualize your data, from bar charts and histograms to pie charts and geomaps.

In this guide, you'll learn how to set up and use the Grafana integration to embed Grafana dashboards into Cortex and drive insights into key values:

• Dashboards

• Real-time metrics

• KPIs

Setup and configuration

In order to embed a Grafana dashboard, you'll first need to make the dashboard public. Then, get the public embed link provided in the iframe snippet. Make sure to enable iframe embedding.

Registration

Discovery

Cortex does not automatically discover Grafana dashboards based on an entity tag. Instead, you'll define the public embed link from the prior step in the YAML for each related entity.

Entity descriptor

x-cortex-dashboards:
  embeds:
    - type: grafana
      url: https://snapshots.raintank.io/dashboard-solo/snapshot/y7zwi2bZ7FcoTlB93WN7yWO4aMiz3pZb?from=1493369923321&to=1493377123321&panelId=4&orgId=0

Field	Description	Required
type	Type of embed (in this case, grafana)	✓
url	Embed URL for the Grafana dashboard	✓

Expected results

Entity pages

Once you've defined the dashboard(s) in a YAML, you'll be able to view the graphs from an entity's details page. Open the Dashboard page from the entity sidebar. All dashboards defined in the descriptor will be embedded on this page.

Note: Grafana dashboards must be defined individually for each entity.

Scorecards and CQL

With the Grafana integration, you can create Scorecard rules and write CQL queries based on Grafana dashboards.

See more examples in the CQL Explorer in Cortex.

Embeds

Query against embeds associated with an entity.

Definition: embeds()

Example

If dashboards are a core part of operations at your organization, you can set a Scorecard rule to make sure entities have embedded dashboards.

embeds().any((embed) => embed.type == "GRAFANA")

Background sync

Dashboards are updated in real time.

FAQs and troubleshooting

I've correctly added the embed URL, but the graph is showing an error or a blank screen.

You may need to enable embedding in your Grafana instance.

Still need help?​

The following options are available to get assistance from the Cortex Customer Engineering team:

• Email: [e-mail], or open a support ticket in the in app Resource Center
• Chat: Available in the Resource Center

• Slack: Users with a connected Slack channel will have a workflow added to their account. From here, you can either @CortexTechnicalSupport or add a :ticket: reaction to a question in Slack, and the team will respond directly.

Don’t have a Slack channel? Talk with your Customer Success Manager.