8 ms·

Grafana 3.0 Stable Released

207 points by torkelo 10y ago

torkelo 10y ago
Here are some release highlights :) * Big UI improvements and polish * Redesigned plugin architecture and SDK * Grafana-cli command line tool shipped with grafana, installs plugins * Persisted dashboard playlists * Preferences like home dashboard, timezone and theme on org and user level * New plugin types, Apps, and Panels. * New platform site built around Grafana at Grafana.net * Plugin repository * Dashboard repository (coming soon) * Hosted Grafana and Hosted metrics (coming soon) * Monitoring and backups of on-prem Grafana (coming soon) * Annotation popovers can contain clickable links * Templated data source Easiy reuse the same dashboard for multiple data source instances * OSX Homebrew support Homebrew installation instructions * Support for InfluxDB 0.11+ (and new functions) Youtube screencast with feature showcase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kJyQKgk_oY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kJyQKgk_oY
- switch007 10y ago
  You (and the other contributors) are a machine. Congratulations on the release!
  - torkelo 10y ago
    Thank you!
gedrap 10y ago
Looks like a nice release! One thing I really miss in grafana and seems like it's not included is alerts. It would be so damn convenient to have data visualization and alerts on the same system because usually they are strongly related from the user point of view. And, well, one thing less to setup and maintain. However, I am aware of the debate whether alerts do actually belong to grafana, or should it be responsible for visualization only and seems like they have settled with the later. Which definitely makes sense because once you start to expand to alerting it's a whole new world and I respect the choice. So yeah, I am a bit sad as a user, however I totally get the authors. Maybe it will be available as a plugin? That being said... What tools HNers are using for placing alerts on data stored in graphite?
- the_angry_angel 10y ago
  Alerting is in the pipeline according to https://github.com/grafana/grafana/issues/2209 https://github.com/grafana/grafana/issues/2209
- davewongillies 10y ago
  I've only had a cursory glance over it but there's Moira for creating alerts based off graphite metrics http://moira.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ http://moira.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
- aidos 10y ago
  I'd love to hear how others manage it too. I have a bunch of little python scripts in cron jobs that pull / compare numbers from graphite and then post to slack. Adhoc but at least there was nothing much to set up / maintain and it's totally flexible. As things expand though I'd definitely like to move to something to look after it for me.
  - endymi0n 10y ago
    We're extremely happy campers here combining the Grafana dashboard with https://prometheus.io/ https://prometheus.io/ Datastore and Alerts. That project has some serious traction and is one of just a few that seems actually built for the cloud and distributed systems first, as it's primarily role and not host based.
    - duncanawoods 10y ago
      Can I ask how you manage logs? My minimal understanding is that prometheus is time-series only so you'd have to supplement with something like ElasticSearch to aggregate logs. Does this mean you are alerting only on metrics or have multiple alert systems or ...?
      - coredog64 10y ago
        We run Grafana for production dashboards with a KairosDB (we are a C* shop) and use ELK for text logs. Grafana can add annotations from ElasticSearch, but beyond that we are looking at our ES alerting options.
JorgeGT 10y ago
It would have been nice to warn beforehand that support for InfluxDB-0.8.X may be broken. I'm having the same issue as https://github.com/grafana/influxdb-08-datasource/issues/3 https://github.com/grafana/influxdb-08-datasource/issues/3 so if you are still using 0.8.x be careful with this upgrade!
jsmeaton 10y ago
I'm a very happy Grafana user. The move to a server based app worried me at first, but it's been humming along nicely the entire time. It's a shame that graphite is still so hard to install/configure (at least from rhel 6 and lower - things might be better on other distros/versions) though. If you're looking to start making some money as a business, I'd be spending a bit of time making sure the data sources are as easy to stand up as possible. Congratulations on the new release and, really, fantastic work!
- Shish2k 10y ago
  FWIW I've switched from Graphite to InfluxDB as a drop-in replacement (ie, influxdb natively accepts graphite-formatted data, I'm ignoring all the extra nice influx features), and I've found that they're both really easy to set up and keep running together :)
- themartorana 10y ago
  I've been using hostedgraphite.com for some time. YMWV.
cstuder 10y ago
I have some random historical meteorological data (multiple time series, ~3 million values, a couple of parameters, nothing big) lying around in a MySQL database which I would love to explore. Grafana looks like a nice tool to at least visualize it. Which supported data source would you recommend for a quick test ride?
- chillydawg 10y ago
  Not openTSDB. That's by far the most difficult to set up. It's also the best in terms of scalability and performance.
  - SEJeff 10y ago
    Actually, druid.io pretty handily beats it. I've witnessed (another team member) scale opentsdb to an obscene number of writes, but getting data out with more than 3-4 tags for a near-realtime dashboard was pretty much impossible. Here is a comment on druid I posted recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11654715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11654715
- MasterScrat 10y ago
  I would go with ElasticSearch.
MasterScrat 10y ago
Things I wish were included in that release: - Some amount of caching/pre-fetching so moving the graph around doesn't take a few seconds each time. At least in the cases where I am zooming in and all the data is already loaded on the client it shouldn't need a network round trip. - The ability to drag the charts left and right by keeping the shift key pressed, as is the default on Dygraphs charts (dygraphs.com) - Switch from Flot to Dygraphs would make client-side rendering faster (at least for the typical line charts)
- torkelo 10y ago
  Grafana is mainly built around time series databases that have good roll ups and are usually quite fast. Graphite queries usually only take 50-150ms (except some rare cases). This is changing a bit with newer slower time series databases that don't have good roll ups or are generally slow. The main problem with prefetching or doing delta fetches is that some queries depend on the whole time range to execute (like moving average, integral, derivate).
XorNot 10y ago
No fullscreen mode via a URL still it seems? It's a big missing feature for when you want to setup overhead monitors and the like.
mixmastamyk 10y ago
I've used grafana from a browser at a company once, and liked it a lot. However, when I've looked at installing it myself, the docs immediately start talking about other projects, like influxdb and elasticsearch, things I know little about nor want to. Conversely, the things I do want to know about, what is it written in, architecture, how to send data?, etc, are missing or buried somewhere. Is there an easy tutorial on how to start sending it data after install? That's all I want. Also, would like to use standard tools like curl, python, and postgres, is that possible?
- pstuart 10y ago
  Technically speaking, you don't send data to Grafana -- it polls a data source (like influxdb, elasticsearch and graphite).
  - mixmastamyk 10y ago
    Ok, that's good information I've never realized, perhaps part of the problem. Or the docs' problem.

207 points by torkelo 10y ago

Here are some release highlights :) * Big UI improvements and polish * Redesigned plugin architecture and SDK * Grafana-cli command line tool shipped with grafana, installs plugins * Persisted dashboard playlists * Preferences like home dashboard, timezone and theme on org and user level * New plugin types, Apps, and Panels. * New platform site built around Grafana at Grafana.net * Plugin repository * Dashboard repository (coming soon) * Hosted Grafana and Hosted metrics (coming soon) * Monitoring and backups of on-prem Grafana (coming soon) * Annotation popovers can contain clickable links * Templated data source Easiy reuse the same dashboard for multiple data source instances * OSX Homebrew support Homebrew installation instructions * Support for InfluxDB 0.11+ (and new functions) Youtube screencast with feature showcase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kJyQKgk_oY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kJyQKgk_oY

switch007 10y ago
You (and the other contributors) are a machine. Congratulations on the release!
- torkelo 10y ago
  Thank you!

gedrap 10y ago

Looks like a nice release! One thing I really miss in grafana and seems like it's not included is alerts. It would be so damn convenient to have data visualization and alerts on the same system because usually they are strongly related from the user point of view. And, well, one thing less to setup and maintain. However, I am aware of the debate whether alerts do actually belong to grafana, or should it be responsible for visualization only and seems like they have settled with the later. Which definitely makes sense because once you start to expand to alerting it's a whole new world and I respect the choice. So yeah, I am a bit sad as a user, however I totally get the authors. Maybe it will be available as a plugin? That being said... What tools HNers are using for placing alerts on data stored in graphite?

the_angry_angel 10y ago
Alerting is in the pipeline according to https://github.com/grafana/grafana/issues/2209 https://github.com/grafana/grafana/issues/2209
davewongillies 10y ago
I've only had a cursory glance over it but there's Moira for creating alerts based off graphite metrics http://moira.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ http://moira.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
aidos 10y ago
I'd love to hear how others manage it too. I have a bunch of little python scripts in cron jobs that pull / compare numbers from graphite and then post to slack. Adhoc but at least there was nothing much to set up / maintain and it's totally flexible. As things expand though I'd definitely like to move to something to look after it for me.
- endymi0n 10y ago
  We're extremely happy campers here combining the Grafana dashboard with https://prometheus.io/ https://prometheus.io/ Datastore and Alerts. That project has some serious traction and is one of just a few that seems actually built for the cloud and distributed systems first, as it's primarily role and not host based.
  - duncanawoods 10y ago
    Can I ask how you manage logs? My minimal understanding is that prometheus is time-series only so you'd have to supplement with something like ElasticSearch to aggregate logs. Does this mean you are alerting only on metrics or have multiple alert systems or ...?
    - coredog64 10y ago
      We run Grafana for production dashboards with a KairosDB (we are a C* shop) and use ELK for text logs. Grafana can add annotations from ElasticSearch, but beyond that we are looking at our ES alerting options.

JorgeGT 10y ago

It would have been nice to warn beforehand that support for InfluxDB-0.8.X may be broken. I'm having the same issue as https://github.com/grafana/influxdb-08-datasource/issues/3 https://github.com/grafana/influxdb-08-datasource/issues/3 so if you are still using 0.8.x be careful with this upgrade!

jsmeaton 10y ago

I'm a very happy Grafana user. The move to a server based app worried me at first, but it's been humming along nicely the entire time. It's a shame that graphite is still so hard to install/configure (at least from rhel 6 and lower - things might be better on other distros/versions) though. If you're looking to start making some money as a business, I'd be spending a bit of time making sure the data sources are as easy to stand up as possible. Congratulations on the new release and, really, fantastic work!

Shish2k 10y ago
FWIW I've switched from Graphite to InfluxDB as a drop-in replacement (ie, influxdb natively accepts graphite-formatted data, I'm ignoring all the extra nice influx features), and I've found that they're both really easy to set up and keep running together :)
themartorana 10y ago
I've been using hostedgraphite.com for some time. YMWV.

cstuder 10y ago

I have some random historical meteorological data (multiple time series, ~3 million values, a couple of parameters, nothing big) lying around in a MySQL database which I would love to explore. Grafana looks like a nice tool to at least visualize it. Which supported data source would you recommend for a quick test ride?

chillydawg 10y ago
Not openTSDB. That's by far the most difficult to set up. It's also the best in terms of scalability and performance.
- SEJeff 10y ago
  Actually, druid.io pretty handily beats it. I've witnessed (another team member) scale opentsdb to an obscene number of writes, but getting data out with more than 3-4 tags for a near-realtime dashboard was pretty much impossible. Here is a comment on druid I posted recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11654715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11654715
MasterScrat 10y ago
I would go with ElasticSearch.

MasterScrat 10y ago

Things I wish were included in that release: - Some amount of caching/pre-fetching so moving the graph around doesn't take a few seconds each time. At least in the cases where I am zooming in and all the data is already loaded on the client it shouldn't need a network round trip. - The ability to drag the charts left and right by keeping the shift key pressed, as is the default on Dygraphs charts (dygraphs.com) - Switch from Flot to Dygraphs would make client-side rendering faster (at least for the typical line charts)

torkelo 10y ago
Grafana is mainly built around time series databases that have good roll ups and are usually quite fast. Graphite queries usually only take 50-150ms (except some rare cases). This is changing a bit with newer slower time series databases that don't have good roll ups or are generally slow. The main problem with prefetching or doing delta fetches is that some queries depend on the whole time range to execute (like moving average, integral, derivate).

XorNot 10y ago

No fullscreen mode via a URL still it seems? It's a big missing feature for when you want to setup overhead monitors and the like.

mixmastamyk 10y ago

I've used grafana from a browser at a company once, and liked it a lot. However, when I've looked at installing it myself, the docs immediately start talking about other projects, like influxdb and elasticsearch, things I know little about nor want to. Conversely, the things I do want to know about, what is it written in, architecture, how to send data?, etc, are missing or buried somewhere. Is there an easy tutorial on how to start sending it data after install? That's all I want. Also, would like to use standard tools like curl, python, and postgres, is that possible?

pstuart 10y ago
Technically speaking, you don't send data to Grafana -- it polls a data source (like influxdb, elasticsearch and graphite).
- mixmastamyk 10y ago
  Ok, that's good information I've never realized, perhaps part of the problem. Or the docs' problem.