Grafana 13 0 1

Grafana 13.0.1

Overview

Grafana is an open-source visualization and analytics platform for metrics, logs, traces, and profiles. It connects to dozens of data sources — Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, PostgreSQL, CloudWatch, Elasticsearch, and more — and provides dashboards, alerting, and ad-hoc exploration.

The Grafana ecosystem includes complementary OSS projects: Loki (log aggregation), Tempo (distributed tracing), Mimir (long-term metrics storage for Prometheus), and Pyroscope (continuous profiling). Together they form the LGTM stack.

Grafana 13.0 introduces Dynamic Dashboards (GA) with a new layout engine and auto-migration, Git Sync (GA) for bidirectional GitOps, dashboard templates, saved queries, and a new Gauge panel type.

When to Use

• Installing or configuring a Grafana instance (bare metal, Docker, Kubernetes)
• Setting up data sources and writing queries against Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, SQL databases, or cloud providers
• Building dashboards with panels, variables, templating, or dynamic layouts
• Creating alert rules, contact points, and notification policies
• Exploring data ad-hoc using the Explore interface
• Provisioning Grafana resources via YAML or Git Sync for GitOps workflows
• Managing users, roles, permissions, service accounts, or plugins
• Upgrading Grafana instances or troubleshooting common issues

Quick Start

Docker Deployment

docker run -d \
  --name grafana \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -e "GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD=admin" \
  -v grafana-data:/var/lib/grafana \
  grafana/grafana:13.0.1

Access at http://localhost:3000, log in with admin / admin.

Minimal Data Source Provisioning

Create /etc/grafana/provisioning/datasources/prometheus.yaml:

apiVersion: 1
datasources:
  - name: Prometheus
    type: prometheus
    url: http://prometheus:9090
    access: proxy
    isDefault: true

Ensure the provisioning loader references it in grafana.ini or /etc/grafana/provisioning/provisioners.yaml:

apiVersion: 1
providers:
  - name: 'default'
    folder: ''
    type: file
    options:
      path: /etc/grafana/provisioning/dashboards

First Dashboard Query (Prometheus)

In Explore or a panel query editor, use PromQL:

up{job="node-exporter"}

This returns 1 for healthy targets and 0 for down targets. Add it to a Time series panel to visualize service availability.

Core Concepts

• Data source — connection to a storage backend (Prometheus, Loki, SQL, etc.) with its own query editor
• Dashboard — collection of panels arranged in a layout, each panel displaying data from one or more queries
• Panel — individual visualization (Time series, Stat, Gauge, Table, Logs, Trace, Heatmap, Canvas, Node Graph)
• Explore — ad-hoc query interface for investigating data without creating a dashboard
• Alert rule — condition evaluated against query results that triggers notifications when breached
• Contact point — notification destination (email, Slack, PagerDuty, webhook)
• Variable — templated value in dashboards that lets users filter or switch between dimensions at runtime
• Provisioning — managing Grafana resources (data sources, dashboards, plugins) via YAML configuration files
• Git Sync — bidirectional GitOps integration connecting Grafana to GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket for dashboard/folder management

Advanced Topics

Installation and Setup: Supported OS, hardware requirements, package managers, Docker deployment, grafana.ini configuration → Installation and Setup

Data Sources: Managing data sources, built-in sources (Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, SQL), query editors, plugin installation, YAML provisioning → Data Sources

Dashboards and Visualizations: Dashboard creation, dynamic dashboards (GA in v13), panel types, variables and templating, annotations, sharing → Dashboards and Visualizations

Alerting: Alert rules, contact points, notification policies, alert states, external integrations, performance considerations → Alerting

Explore and Queries: Explore interface, query management, ad hoc filters, saved queries, correlations → Explore and Queries

Administration: User management, roles and permissions, service accounts, provisioning system, Git Sync (GA in v13), plugin management, CLI → Administration

Upgrade and Troubleshooting: Upgrade process, breaking changes in v13.0, database migrations, backup/restore, common issues → Upgrade and Troubleshooting