Catalog / Grafana Cheatsheet
Grafana Cheatsheet
A comprehensive cheat sheet covering essential Grafana concepts, configurations, and best practices for effective monitoring and visualization.
Core Concepts & Navigation
Key Terminology
Dashboard |
A collection of panels arranged for a specific monitoring purpose. |
Panel |
A single visualization displaying data from a specific data source. |
Data Source |
A connection to a database or service providing the data for visualization (e.g., Prometheus, InfluxDB). |
Query |
A request for specific data from a data source, defined using the data source’s query language. |
Variable |
A dynamic value used in queries and panel titles to allow for flexible dashboards. |
Alert |
A notification triggered when data meets predefined conditions. |
Navigation Shortcuts
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Open dashboard search. |
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Focus the Grafana search bar. |
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Close modals and dropdowns. |
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Toggle the variables. |
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Quick date range. |
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Show all shortcuts. |
Data Sources & Querying
Common Data Sources
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PromQL Essentials (Prometheus)
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Selects all time series with the given metric name. |
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Filters by label value. |
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Calculates the per-second rate of increase over a 5-minute window. |
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Aggregates the sum of all time series. |
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Calculates the average value over a 1-hour window. |
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Calculates the increase in the time series over the specified time range. The returned results is added to the last value. |
InfluxQL Essentials (InfluxDB)
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Selects all values of the specified field from the measurement. |
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Filters by tag value. |
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Calculates the mean of the field grouped into 5-minute intervals. |
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Calculates the sum of the field. |
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Calculates the max of the field. |
Panel Types & Customization
Common Panel Types
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Panel Options
Title |
Sets the panel title. |
Description |
Add a descriptive text to the panel. |
Time range |
Overrides the dashboard time range for a specific panel. |
Axes |
Configures the Y-axis labels, units, and scaling. |
Legend |
Customize the legend display (e.g., placement, visibility). |
Thresholds |
Sets thresholds for alerting and visual highlighting. |
Customizing Visualizations
Grafana provides various options to customize the look and feel of panels. |
You can use overrides to configure each panel individually, or use the Dashboard JSON model to make changes programmatically. |
Alerting & Notifications
Alerting Rules
Evaluation interval |
How often the rule is evaluated. |
Conditions |
The conditions that must be met for the alert to trigger (e.g., value above threshold). |
Notifications |
The notification channels to send alerts to (e.g., email, Slack, PagerDuty). |
For |
How long the condition must be met before the alert is triggered. |
Annotations |
Add notes about the alert. It is possible to add variables to the annotations. |
Notification Channels
Grafana supports a variety of notification channels, including Email, Slack, PagerDuty, Webhooks, and more. |
When configuring webhooks, take into account security issues. |
Alert States
OK |
The alert is not active and the condition is not met. |
Pending |
The alert condition has been met, but the ‘For’ duration has not yet elapsed. |
Firing |
The alert is active and notifications are being sent. |
No Data |
The alert is active but the query returns no data. Check the query to make sure that it returns data in the selected time period. |