grafana-dashboards

Grafana Dashboards Create and manage production-ready Grafana dashboards for comprehensive system observability. Do not use this skill when The task is unrelated to grafana dashboards You need a different domain or tool outside this scope Instructions 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 . Purpose Design effective Grafana dashboards for monitoring applications, infrastructure, and business metrics. Use this skill when Visualize Prometheus metrics Create custom dashboards Implement SLO dashboards Monitor infrastructure Track business KPIs Dashboard Design Principles 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 Dashboard Structure API Monitoring Dashboard { "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 Panel Types 1. Stat Panel (Single Value) { "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 { "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 { "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 { "type" : "heatmap" , "title" : "Latency Heatmap" , "targets" : [ { "expr" : "sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket[5m])) by (le)" , "format" : "heatmap" } ] , "dataFormat" : "tsbuckets" , "yAxis" : { "format" : "s" } } Variables Query Variables { "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])) Alerts in Dashboards { "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" } ] } } Dashboard Provisioning dashboards.yml: apiVersion : 1 providers : - name : 'default' orgId : 1 folder : 'General' type : file disableDeletion : false updateIntervalSeconds : 10 allowUiUpdates : true options : path : /etc/grafana/dashboards Common Dashboard Patterns 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 Best Practices Start with templates (Grafana community dashboards) Use consistent naming for panels and variables Group related metrics in rows Set appropriate time ranges (default: Last 6 hours) Use variables for flexibility Add panel descriptions for context Configure units correctly Set meaningful thresholds for colors Use consistent colors across dashboards Test with different time ranges Dashboard as Code Terraform Provisioning 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 - name : Deploy Grafana dashboards copy : src : "{{ item }}" dest : /etc/grafana/dashboards/ with_fileglob : - "dashboards/*.json" notify : restart grafana Reference Files 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