Grafana

Grafana is the visualization layer for Observability. Grafana 11 (2025) introduces Scenes (dynamic dashboards) and deeper correlation between Metrics, Logs, and Traces.

When to Use

• Dashboards: Visualize data from Prometheus, InfluxDB, CloudWatch, SQL, etc.
• Single Pane of Glass: Combine metrics (Prometheus), logs (Loki), and traces (Tempo) in one UI.
• Alerting: Unified alerting UI regardless of the data source.

Quick Start

Run via Docker: docker run -d -p 3000:3000 grafana/grafana

Or Provision as Code (YAML):

apiVersion: 1
providers:
  - name: "default"
    folder: ""
    type: file
    options:
      path: /var/lib/grafana/dashboards

Core Concepts

Data Sources

Plugins that connect to storage backends.

Panels

Individual visualizations (Time Series, Gauge, Bar Chart).

Variables

Dropdowns at the top of dashboards (e.g., Select Cluster or Namespace) to make dashboards dynamic.

Best Practices (2025)

Do:

• Provision as Code: Store dashboards as JSON files in Git.
• Use Explore metrics: The new v11 UI for ad-hoc querying.
• Standardize Labels: Ensure "env" and "service" labels match across Metrics and Logs for seamless correlation links.

Don't:

• Don't hardcode queries: Use Variables so one dashboard serves all environments.

References

• Grafana Documentation