This repository contains Grafana plugins, the included plugins are the GeoMap panel plugin, the Heatmap plugin and the Cassandra Health plugin. Here, we'll also go through how to install the plugins into Grafana, and how to set them up so they work properly. All plugins support retrieving data from a Graphite data source. The plugin may work with other data sources, but this has not been tested.
The GeoMap plugin visualizes roaming service statistics (i.e data, mms, sms, voice) for each country in the world. This is achieved by calculating the heat for each country and represent the calculated heat by coloring each country in a world map. Documentation for this plugin can be found here.
The heatmap panel contains functionality to visualize product usage and lapse through time to see how the products usage have changed. Documentation for this plugin can be found here.
Cassandra Health plugin provides you with an overview performance visualization of your server. Predefined dashboard currently displays:
- Memory usage
- CPU performance usage
- Disk space usage
- Amount of CDR's generated
Documentation for this plugin can be found here.
To install a plugin you'll need to download the folder for the wanted plugin found in this repository. If you want to install the GeoMap panel plugin, you need to download the geomap_panel folder, if you want to install the Heatmap plugin, you need to download the heatmap_panel folder and if you want to install the Cassandra Health Metrics dashboard you need to download the cassandra_health_panel folder.
The script containers.sh in the main repository will start all backend containers and Grafana container where both of the panels are installed.
When you have downloaded the folder you want, move the folder into the plugins folder found inside your Grafana plugin directory. Just move the folder manually or execute a command line to do it for you:
cp -fr CURRENT_PLUGIN_FOLDER_LOCATION YOUR_GRAFANA_PLUGIN_FOLDER_LOCATION
When the folder is in the correct place, you'll need to open up the terminal and navigate to the downloaded plugin folder. You will now need to install all the dependencies for the plugin, for this we're using npm.
npm install
Now that we have all the dependencies needed, we will need to build the plugin, this is done using grunt.
grunt
In order for your plugin to retrieve data, you'll need to setup a data source. We're currently only supporting Graphite as a data source. Other data sources may work, but we can't guarantee it.
To setup a data source, make sure you're logged into an account with administration access, click the Grafana icon and navigate to the Data Sources option.
Click the button that's labeled Add data source and you will be redirected to a new page where you can add your data source.
Fill in your credentials and press the Save & Test button. Grafana will check that the credentials are correct and that the data source can be found. As mentioned previously, we recommend that you use a Graphite data source.
When a datasource is setup and the panels are installed you have to create dashboards for using the panels. This can be done manually or by importing json-files. We have provided json-files in our repository that contain our preferred dashboards. These dashboards contain the specific queries and templates needed for all features of our panels. We recommend using these dashboards and then modifying them however you like.
To import our dashboards navigate to the dashboards menu next to the main Grafana menu in the top left corner. Press import at the bottom of the menu and a new window will appear. Next, press the Upload .json File button. You will find our dashboards in our repository at Qvantel/QvantelFrontend/config/dashboards.
The dashboards that we have are one for the GeoMap panel, one for the Heatmap panel and a Home panel for easily navigating to either of these. Note that the GeoMap panel and Heatmap panel must be imported and named according to our json-files to function properly.
To display the plugin you have to setup a dashboard. To do this, you will need to open up Grafana in your web browser and login to an account with administration access. When you're logged in, you can see a Grafana icon in the top left corner, click the icon and a dropdown will appear. Here you can see several options, but the one we want is the Dashboards option. A submenu will appear and here you'll want to navigate to New.
You will now see a list of plugins in a horizontal list, locate the plugin you installed and drag and drop it into the panel that says Empty Space.
You should now see the plugin displayed inside the panel you dropped the plugin into. You will now need to add a data source in order to retrieve data for the plugin.
If your data source is setup, you'll want to access the Metrics for the dashboard. Click the title of the panel and menu will appear, click the Edit option and a new section below the dashboard will appear. You will now see a set of tabs. The amount may vary depending on your plugin, but the tab we're currently interested in is the Metrics tab. Here, you'll be able to setup the query for your data source. This query will be specific to the plugin you're using.
To setup the Graphite query for the plugin, please see the documentation for the respective plugin: GeoMap documentation, Heatmap documentation and Cassandra Health documentation
Grafana also supports different themes. The default is the dark theme. If you'd rather want a lighter theme you can change it.
To achieve this, press the Grafan icon to the top left corner, hover your profile and navigate to Preferences. Here you can see several sections, but in the Preferences section, there is an option called UI Theme. Select the theme you prefer and press the Update button. The plugins should respond to which theme is being used and change their default color scheme.
Annotations are used to display events on the timelines for the heat and worldmap. Documentation on how to use annotations can be found here.
Since Grafana's documentation information we've needed, we have written a document around how we have used Grafana. This document can be found here.