HOWTO Bring your own dashboard as code

Until Atik 1.6 , you're now able to provide your own Grafana dashboard(s) as code. Grafana now scans the configmaps (with proper annotations) deployed in your namespaces and dynamically provision Grafana

The goal of this documentation is to show you how to :

• Create / copy a Grafana dashboard

• Export it to a JSON model

• Create a ConfigMap from the JSON model

• Deploy this ConfigMap in your CICD

Create

• Start from scratch

• Create a dashboard based on an existing one

Start from scratch

• Connect to your Grafana instance

• Click Create

• Add your panel(s) with default as datasource

• Apply your changes

• Then go to Dashboard Settings

• Set a dashboard name in General/Name field

• Set dashboard tags in tags field

You can now see the JSON model and save it to a file. Next step is to create a configmap with this json model

Copy an existing dashboard

TODO

Create your configmap

With you dashboard json as dashboard.json :

kubectl create configmap \
   your-dashboard-name \
   --from-file=./dashboard.json \
   --dry-run=client -o yaml  \
   > dashboard.yaml

There is an example :

apiVersion: v1
data:
  dashboard.json: |
    {
      "annotations": {
        "list": [
          {
            "builtIn": 1,
            "datasource": "-- Grafana --",
            "enable": true,
            "hide": true,
            "iconColor": "rgba(0, 211, 255, 1)",
            "name": "Annotations & Alerts",
            "type": "dashboard"
          }
        ]
      },
      "editable": true,
      "gnetId": null,
      "graphTooltip": 0,
      "id": null,
      "links": [],
      "panels": [
        {
          "aliasColors": {},
          "bars": false,
          "dashLength": 10,
          "dashes": false,
          "datasource": null,
          "fieldConfig": {
            "defaults": {
              "custom": {}
            },
            "overrides": []
          },
          "fill": 1,
          "fillGradient": 0,
          "gridPos": {
            "h": 9,
            "w": 12,
            "x": 0,
            "y": 0
          },
          "hiddenSeries": false,
          "id": 2,
          "legend": {
            "avg": false,
            "current": false,
            "max": false,
            "min": false,
            "show": true,
            "total": false,
            "values": false
          },
          "lines": true,
          "linewidth": 1,
          "nullPointMode": "null",
          "options": {
            "alertThreshold": true
          },
          "percentage": false,
          "pluginVersion": "7.3.5",
          "pointradius": 2,
          "points": false,
          "renderer": "flot",
          "seriesOverrides": [],
          "spaceLength": 10,
          "stack": false,
          "steppedLine": false,
          "targets": [
            {
              "expr": "up{app=\"blackduck\"}",
              "interval": "",
              "legendFormat": "",
              "refId": "A"
            }
          ],
          "thresholds": [],
          "timeFrom": null,
          "timeRegions": [],
          "timeShift": null,
          "title": "Panel Title",
          "tooltip": {
            "shared": true,
            "sort": 0,
            "value_type": "individual"
          },
          "type": "graph",
          "xaxis": {
            "buckets": null,
            "mode": "time",
            "name": null,
            "show": true,
            "values": []
          },
          "yaxes": [
            {
              "format": "short",
              "label": null,
              "logBase": 1,
              "max": null,
              "min": null,
              "show": true
            },
            {
              "format": "short",
              "label": null,
              "logBase": 1,
              "max": null,
              "min": null,
              "show": true
            }
          ],
          "yaxis": {
            "align": false,
            "alignLevel": null
          }
        }
      ],
      "schemaVersion": 26,
      "style": "dark",
      "tags": [
        "myapp",
        "mytenant"
      ],
      "templating": {
        "list": []
      },
      "time": {
        "from": "now-6h",
        "to": "now"
      },
      "timepicker": {},
      "timezone": "",
      "title": "MyLittleNewDashboard",
      "uid": null,
      "version": 0
    }
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: null
  name: your-dashboard-name

Add annotations

These annotation will indicate to Grafana to integrate the configmap as a dashboard and in which folder to deploy the dashboard

From :

kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: null
  name: your-dashboard-name

to

kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: null
  name: your-dashboard-name
  namespace: dev
  annotations:
    grafana_folder: /tmp/dashboards/MyDashboardFolder
  labels:
    grafana_dashboard: "1"

metadata.namespace

Specify a namespace where to deploy this configmap You need to have access to this namespace

metadata.annoations.grafana_folder

The value MUST be a one level directory in /tmp/dashboards

Sub-directories are not yet supported

metadata.annoations.grafana_dashboard

1 to enable it, 0 disable it

You can now deploy this configmap using kubectl apply or your classic CICD pipeline