Provisioning Grafana

In previous versions of Grafana, you could only use the API for provisioning data sources and dashboards. But that required the service to be running before you started creating dashboards and you also needed to set up credentials for the HTTP API. In v5.0 we decided to improve this experience by adding a new active provisioning system that uses config files. This will make GitOps more natural as data sources and dashboards can be defined via files that can be version controlled. We hope to extend this system to later add support for users, orgs and alerts as well.

Config File

Checkout the configuration page for more information on what you can configure in grafana.ini

Config File Locations

• Default configuration from $WORKING_DIR/conf/defaults.ini
• Custom configuration from $WORKING_DIR/conf/custom.ini
• The custom configuration file path can be overridden using the —config parameter

Note. If you have installed Grafana using the deb or rpm packages, then your configuration file is located at /etc/grafana/grafana.ini. This path is specified in the Grafana init.d script using —config file parameter.

Using Environment Variables

It is possible to use environment variable interpolation in all 3 provisioning config types. Allowed syntax is either $ENV_VAR_NAME or ${ENV_VAR_NAME} and can be used only for values not for keys or bigger parts of the configs. It is not available in the dashboards definition files just the dashboard provisioning configuration. Example:

datasources:
- name: Graphite
  url: http://localhost:$PORT
  user: $USER
  secureJsonData:
    password: $PASSWORD

Configuration Management Tools

Currently we do not provide any scripts/manifests for configuring Grafana. Rather than spending time learning and creating scripts/manifests for each tool, we think our time is better spent making Grafana easier to provision. Therefore, we heavily relay on the expertise of the community.

Datasources

This feature is available from v5.0

It’s possible to manage datasources in Grafana by adding one or more yaml config files in the provisioning/datasources directory. Each config file can contain a list of datasources that will be added or updated during start up. If the datasource already exists, Grafana will update it to match the configuration file. The config file can also contain a list of datasources that should be deleted. That list is called deleteDatasources. Grafana will delete datasources listed in deleteDatasources before inserting/updating those in the datasource list.

Running Multiple Grafana Instances

If you are running multiple instances of Grafana you might run into problems if they have different versions of the datasource.yaml configuration file. The best way to solve this problem is to add a version number to each datasource in the configuration and increase it when you update the config. Grafana will only update datasources with the same or lower version number than specified in the config. That way, old configs cannot overwrite newer configs if they restart at the same time.

Example Datasource Config File

# config file version
apiVersion: 1
# list of datasources that should be deleted from the database
deleteDatasources:
  - name: Graphite
    orgId: 1
# list of datasources to insert/update depending
# what's available in the database
datasources:
  # <string, required> name of the datasource. Required
- name: Graphite
  # <string, required> datasource type. Required
  type: graphite
  # <string, required> access mode. proxy or direct (Server or Browser in the UI). Required
  access: proxy
  # <int> org id. will default to orgId 1 if not specified
  orgId: 1
  # <string> url
  url: http://localhost:8080
  # <string> Deprecated, use secureJsonData.password
  password:
  # <string> database user, if used
  user:
  # <string> database name, if used
  database:
  # <bool> enable/disable basic auth
  basicAuth:
  # <string> basic auth username
  basicAuthUser:
  # <string> Deprecated, use secureJsonData.basicAuthPassword
  basicAuthPassword:
  # <bool> enable/disable with credentials headers
  withCredentials:
  # <bool> mark as default datasource. Max one per org
  isDefault:
  # <map> fields that will be converted to json and stored in jsonData
  jsonData:
     graphiteVersion: "1.1"
     tlsAuth: true
     tlsAuthWithCACert: true
  # <string> json object of data that will be encrypted.
  secureJsonData:
    tlsCACert: "..."
    tlsClientCert: "..."
    tlsClientKey: "..."
    # <string> database password, if used
    password:
    # <string> basic auth password
    basicAuthPassword:
  version: 1
  # <bool> allow users to edit datasources from the UI.
  editable: false

Custom Settings per Datasource

Please refer to each datasource documentation for specific provisioning examples.

Json Data

Since not all datasources have the same configuration settings we only have the most common ones as fields. The rest should be stored as a json blob in the jsonData field. Here are the most common settings that the core datasources use.

Secure Json Data

{"authType":"keys","defaultRegion":"us-west-2","timeField":"@timestamp"}

Secure json data is a map of settings that will be encrypted with secret key from the Grafana config. The purpose of this is only to hide content from the users of the application. This should be used for storing TLS Cert and password that Grafana will append to the request on the server side. All of these settings are optional.

Custom HTTP headers for datasources

Datasources managed by Grafanas provisioning can be configured to add HTTP headers to all requests going to that datasource. The header name is configured in the jsonData field and the header value should be configured in secureJsonData.

apiVersion: 1
datasources:
- name: Graphite
  jsonData:
    httpHeaderName1: "HeaderName"
    httpHeaderName2: "Authorization"
  secureJsonData:
    httpHeaderValue1: "HeaderValue"
    httpHeaderValue2: "Bearer XXXXXXXXX"

Dashboards

It’s possible to manage dashboards in Grafana by adding one or more yaml config files in the provisioning/dashboards directory. Each config file can contain a list of dashboards providers that will load dashboards into Grafana from the local filesystem.

The dashboard provider config file looks somewhat like this:

apiVersion: 1
providers:
  # <string> an unique provider name
- name: 'a unique provider name'
  # <int> org id. will default to orgId 1 if not specified
  orgId: 1
  # <string, required> name of the dashboard folder. Required
  folder: ''
  # <string> folder UID. will be automatically generated if not specified
  folderUid: ''
  # <string, required> provider type. Required
  type: file
  # <bool> disable dashboard deletion
  disableDeletion: false
  # <bool> enable dashboard editing
  editable: true
  # <int> how often Grafana will scan for changed dashboards
  updateIntervalSeconds: 10
  options:
    # <string, required> path to dashboard files on disk. Required
    path: /var/lib/grafana/dashboards

When Grafana starts, it will update/insert all dashboards available in the configured path. Then later on poll that path every updateIntervalSeconds and look for updated json files and update/insert those into the database.

Making changes to a provisioned dashboard

It’s possible to make changes to a provisioned dashboard in Grafana UI, but there’s currently no possibility to automatically save the changes back to the provisioning source. However, if you make changes to a provisioned dashboard you can Save the dashboard which will bring up a Cannot save provisioned dashboard dialog like seen in the screenshot below. Here available options will let you Copy JSON to Clipboard and/or Save JSON to file which can help you synchronize your dashboard changes back to the provisioning source.

Note: The JSON shown in input field and when using Copy JSON to Clipboard and/or Save JSON to file will have the id field automatically removed to aid the provisioning workflow.

Reusable Dashboard Urls

If the dashboard in the json file contains an uid, Grafana will force insert/update on that uid. This allows you to migrate dashboards betweens Grafana instances and provisioning Grafana from configuration without breaking the urls given since the new dashboard url uses the uid as identifier. When Grafana starts, it will update/insert all dashboards available in the configured folders. If you modify the file, the dashboard will also be updated. By default Grafana will delete dashboards in the database if the file is removed. You can disable this behavior using the disableDeletion setting.

Note. Provisioning allows you to overwrite existing dashboards which leads to problems if you re-use settings that are supposed to be unique. Be careful not to re-use the same title multiple times within a folder or uid within the same installation as this will cause weird behaviors.

Alert Notification Channels

Alert Notification Channels can be provisioned by adding one or more yaml config files in the provisioning/notifiers directory.

Each config file can contain the following top-level fields: - notifiers, a list of alert notifications that will be added or updated during start up. If the notification channel already exists, Grafana will update it to match the configuration file. - delete_notifiers, a list of alert notifications to be deleted before before inserting/updating those in the notifiers list.

Provisioning looks up alert notifications by uid, and will update any existing notification with the provided uid.

By default, exporting a dashboard as JSON will use a sequential identifier to refer to alert notifications. The field uid can be optionally specified to specify a string identifier for the alert name.

{
  ...
      "alert": {
        ...,
        "conditions": [...],
        "frequency": "24h",
        "noDataState": "ok",
        "notifications": [
           {"uid": "notifier1"},
           {"uid": "notifier2"},
        ]
      }
  ...
}

Example Alert Notification Channels Config File

notifiers:
  - name: notification-channel-1
    type: slack
    uid: notifier1
    # either
    org_id: 2
    # or
    org_name: Main Org.
    is_default: true
    send_reminder: true
    frequency: 1h
    disable_resolve_message: false
    # See `Supported Settings` section for settings supporter for each
    # alert notification type.
    settings:
      recipient: "XXX"
      token: "xoxb"
      uploadImage: true
      url: https://slack.com
delete_notifiers:
  - name: notification-channel-1
    uid: notifier1
    # either
    org_id: 2
    # or
    org_name: Main Org.
  - name: notification-channel-2
    # default org_id: 1

Supported Settings

The following sections detail the supported settings for each alert notification type.

Alert notification pushover

Alert notification slack

Alert notification victorops

Alert notification kafka

Alert notification LINE

Alert notification pagerduty

Alert notification sensu

Alert notification prometheus-alertmanager

Alert notification teams

Alert notification dingding

Alert notification email

Alert notification hipchat

Alert notification opsgenie

Alert notification telegram

Alert notification threema

Alert notification webhook

Alert notification googlechat