How To Setup Grafana with Graphite And Create Basic Dashboards

• Prepare Apache for the Grafana installation and configuration
  • Edit the “/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf” file and add the following line of text below the “Listen 80” line to ensure Apache listens on port 8080:

    Listen 8080

  • Also add the following lines right after the “Include conf.d/*.conf” line to the aforementioned file to prepare Apache for Grafana (replace ‘10.26.69.144’ with the IP address of your Grafana server)

    # Added for Grafana
    <VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerName 10.26.69.144
     ServerAlias 10.26.69.144
     Redirect permanent / http://10.26.69.144:3000/
    </VirtualHost>

  • Edit the “/etc/httpd/conf.d/graphite-web.conf” file and make the appropriate changes to the “<Virtual Host *” line

    <VirtualHost *:8080>

  • Restart Apache to apply the recent configuration changes

    /etc/init.d/httpd restart

• Install and configure InfluxDB which will serve as a backend for Grafana
  • Download the latest version of the InfluxDB RPM

    wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/influxdb/influxdb-0.8.8-1.x86_64.rpm
    

  • Install the InfluxDB RPM package

    rpm -ivh influxdb-0.8.8-1.x86_64

  • Enable InfluxDB to start at boot

    ln -s /opt/influxdb/current/scripts/init.sh /etc/init.d/influxdb
    chkconfig influxdb on

  • Ensure that InfluxDB is started (if not start it)

    /etc/init.d/influxdb status
    /etc/init.d/influxdb start

  • Login to the InfluxDB management URL which can be accessed by browsing to  http://<server_ip_address>:8083
  • Once you are logged in using the default username & password of “root”, create a database named “dashboards”
  • Next you will want to click the database name and then create a new admin database user named “grafana”. Please ensure that you are recording the passwords specified in the recent steps as you will need these in the coming steps.
  • Reset the “root” user password by browsing to “Cluster Admins” -> root, entering a new password twice, and then clicking “Change Password”.
• Install and configure Grafana
  • Download the latest version of Grafana

    cd ~
    wget http://grafanarel.s3.amazonaws.com/builds/grafana-2.1.0-pre1.x86_64.rpm

  • Install Grafana by installing the the recently downloaded RPM file

    rpm -ivh grafana-2.1.0-pre1.x86_64.rpm

  • Ensure you can access the Grafana web interface by browsing to http://<server_ip_address>
  • Create your graphite data source by clicking “Data Sources” and then “Add new”. Ensure to fill out the fields as follows and then click “Add”:

    Name: graphite
    Default: checked
    Type: Graphite
    HTTP settings
    Url: http://<server_ip_address>:8080
    Access: direct
    

• Verify Grafana is operating properly and create a basic dashboard
  •  With the Grafana web interface still up click “Home” in the upper right hand corner
  • Under “Load dashboard from Graphite-Web” select “graphite” for the data source field and click “List dashboards” under and ensure that no errors get returned (Hint no results will be returned)
  • Once you have verified the graphite data source is working properly click on “Dashboards” on the left side of the screen (under the Grafana logo)
  • You can then create a new dashboard by clicking on “Home” and then “New”
  • Create a basic graph by hovering over the green vertical rectangle and by selecting “Add Panel” -> “Graph”
  • Edit the graph by clicking the title and selecting “edit”
  • Give the graph a name by selecting the “General” tab and by specifying a custom name in the “Title” text field
  • Next you will select “Metrics” -> “graphite” -> “graphite” to ensure that the proper data source is utilized for this graph
  • Specify a metric by clicking “select metric” -> netapp-performance -> “select metric” -> Clusters -> “select metric” -> <cluster_name> -> “select metric” -> SVMs -> “select metric” -> <svm_name> -> “select metric” -> Volumes -> “select metric” -> * -> TOTAL_OPS
  • Once you are done customizing this graph you can add more (or quit) by pressing the “Back to dashboard” button at the top of the page
  • You should now see the recently created graph on your dashboard however you will need to save your changes. You can do this by clicking the floppy disk icon (at the top of the page) -> specifying a dashboard name in the text field -> clicking the floppy disk icon to the right of the text field.
  • If you wanted to set aforementioned dashboard as the default you can click the floppy disk icon (at the top of the page) -> “Save as Home”
  • Your end result will look something like this:
    

For more details please refer to the following links:

• PERFORMANCE DASHBOARDS STEP 2 – INSTALLING AND CONFIGURING GRAPHITE
• Grafana – Docs – Installation

UPDATED on 2015-07-13: This guide was updated to not only incorporate the new steps required to install Grafana 2.1 using the prebuilt RPM but also to follow along with the new interface layout.