grafana-dashboards

• The task is unrelated to grafana dashboards
• You need a different domain or tool outside this scope

• Clarify goals, constraints, and required inputs.
• Apply relevant best practices and validate outcomes.
• Provide actionable steps and verification.
• If detailed examples are required, open resources/implementation-playbook.md.

Design effective Grafana dashboards for monitoring applications, infrastructure, and business metrics.

• Visualize Prometheus metrics
• Create custom dashboards
• Implement SLO dashboards
• Monitor infrastructure
• Track business KPIs

1. Hierarchy of Information

```

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐

│ Critical Metrics (Big Numbers) │

├─────────────────────────────────────┤

│ Key Trends (Time Series) │

├─────────────────────────────────────┤

│ Detailed Metrics (Tables/Heatmaps) │

└─────────────────────────────────────┘

```

2. RED Method (Services)

• Rate - Requests per second
• Errors - Error rate
• Duration - Latency/response time

3. USE Method (Resources)

• Utilization - % time resource is busy
• Saturation - Queue length/wait time
• Errors - Error count

API Monitoring Dashboard

```json

{

"dashboard": {

"title": "API Monitoring",

"tags": ["api", "production"],

"timezone": "browser",

"refresh": "30s",

"panels": [

{

"title": "Request Rate",

"type": "graph",

"targets": [

{

"expr": "sum(rate(http_requests_total[5m])) by (service)",

"legendFormat": "{{service}}"

}

],

"gridPos": {"x": 0, "y": 0, "w": 12, "h": 8}

},

{

"title": "Error Rate %",

"type": "graph",

"targets": [

{

"expr": "(sum(rate(http_requests_total{status=~\"5..\"}[5m])) / sum(rate(http_requests_total[5m]))) * 100",

"legendFormat": "Error Rate"

}

],

"alert": {

"conditions": [

{

"evaluator": {"params": [5], "type": "gt"},

"operator": {"type": "and"},

"query": {"params": ["A", "5m", "now"]},

"type": "query"

}

]

},

"gridPos": {"x": 12, "y": 0, "w": 12, "h": 8}

},

{

"title": "P95 Latency",

"type": "graph",

"targets": [

{

"expr": "histogram_quantile(0.95, sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket[5m])) by (le, service))",

"legendFormat": "{{service}}"

}

],

"gridPos": {"x": 0, "y": 8, "w": 24, "h": 8}

}

]

}

}

```

Reference: See assets/api-dashboard.json

1. Stat Panel (Single Value)

```json

{

"type": "stat",

"title": "Total Requests",

"targets": [{

"expr": "sum(http_requests_total)"

}],

"options": {

"reduceOptions": {

"values": false,

"calcs": ["lastNotNull"]

},

"orientation": "auto",

"textMode": "auto",

"colorMode": "value"

},

"fieldConfig": {

"defaults": {

"thresholds": {

"mode": "absolute",

"steps": [

{"value": 0, "color": "green"},

{"value": 80, "color": "yellow"},

{"value": 90, "color": "red"}

]

}

}

}

}

```

2. Time Series Graph

```json

{

"type": "graph",

"title": "CPU Usage",

"targets": [{

"expr": "100 - (avg by (instance) (rate(node_cpu_seconds_total{mode=\"idle\"}[5m])) * 100)"

}],

"yaxes": [

{"format": "percent", "max": 100, "min": 0},

{"format": "short"}

]

}

```

3. Table Panel

```json

{

"type": "table",

"title": "Service Status",

"targets": [{

"expr": "up",

"format": "table",

"instant": true

}],

"transformations": [

{

"id": "organize",

"options": {

"excludeByName": {"Time": true},

"indexByName": {},

"renameByName": {

"instance": "Instance",

"job": "Service",

"Value": "Status"

}

}

}

]

}

```

4. Heatmap

```json

{

"type": "heatmap",

"title": "Latency Heatmap",

"targets": [{

"expr": "sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket[5m])) by (le)",

"format": "heatmap"

}],

"dataFormat": "tsbuckets",

"yAxis": {

"format": "s"

}

}

```

Query Variables

```json

{

"templating": {

"list": [

{

"name": "namespace",

"type": "query",

"datasource": "Prometheus",

"query": "label_values(kube_pod_info, namespace)",

"refresh": 1,

"multi": false

},

{

"name": "service",

"type": "query",

"datasource": "Prometheus",

"query": "label_values(kube_service_info{namespace=\"$namespace\"}, service)",

"refresh": 1,

"multi": true

}

]

}

}

```

Use Variables in Queries

```

sum(rate(http_requests_total{namespace="$namespace", service=~"$service"}[5m]))

```

```json

{

"alert": {

"name": "High Error Rate",

"conditions": [

{

"evaluator": {

"params": [5],

"type": "gt"

},

"operator": {"type": "and"},

"query": {

"params": ["A", "5m", "now"]

},

"reducer": {"type": "avg"},

"type": "query"

}

],

"executionErrorState": "alerting",

"for": "5m",

"frequency": "1m",

"message": "Error rate is above 5%",

"noDataState": "no_data",

"notifications": [

{"uid": "slack-channel"}

]

}

}

```

dashboards.yml:

```yaml

apiVersion: 1

providers:

- name: 'default'

orgId: 1

folder: 'General'

type: file

disableDeletion: false

updateIntervalSeconds: 10

allowUiUpdates: true

options:

path: /etc/grafana/dashboards

```

Infrastructure Dashboard

Key Panels:

• CPU utilization per node
• Memory usage per node
• Disk I/O
• Network traffic
• Pod count by namespace
• Node status

Reference: See assets/infrastructure-dashboard.json

Database Dashboard

Key Panels:

• Queries per second
• Connection pool usage
• Query latency (P50, P95, P99)
• Active connections
• Database size
• Replication lag
• Slow queries

Reference: See assets/database-dashboard.json

Application Dashboard

Key Panels:

• Request rate
• Error rate
• Response time (percentiles)
• Active users/sessions
• Cache hit rate
• Queue length

1. Start with templates (Grafana community dashboards)
2. Use consistent naming for panels and variables
3. Group related metrics in rows
4. Set appropriate time ranges (default: Last 6 hours)
5. Use variables for flexibility
6. Add panel descriptions for context
7. Configure units correctly
8. Set meaningful thresholds for colors
9. Use consistent colors across dashboards
10. Test with different time ranges

Terraform Provisioning

```hcl

resource "grafana_dashboard" "api_monitoring" {

config_json = file("${path.module}/dashboards/api-monitoring.json")

folder = grafana_folder.monitoring.id

}

resource "grafana_folder" "monitoring" {

title = "Production Monitoring"

}

```

Ansible Provisioning

```yaml

• name: Deploy Grafana dashboards

copy:

src: "{{ item }}"

dest: /etc/grafana/dashboards/

with_fileglob:

- "dashboards/*.json"

notify: restart grafana

```

• assets/api-dashboard.json - API monitoring dashboard
• assets/infrastructure-dashboard.json - Infrastructure dashboard
• assets/database-dashboard.json - Database monitoring dashboard
• references/dashboard-design.md - Dashboard design guide

• prometheus-configuration - For metric collection
• slo-implementation - For SLO dashboards