Grafana operator

This tool is used to render the Grafana dashboard with predefined variables statically. (supports Grafana v6+)

Why do I develop this?

Grafana dashboard supports template variables, which will improve the expression, user can easily use predefined variables to render the dashboard dynamically, not only the queries including these variables can be rendered, but also the panels can be repeated by variable. This reduces a lot of toils to create multiple similar graphs which only differ in some arguments.

But the Grafana alerts can't be supported when using template variables, you might use alertmanager or other approaches to implement.

QuickStart

1. define a template dashboard in Grafana
   A template dashboard is the same as a dashboard with template variables, define the variables you will customize later.

2. create the configuration for rendering variables
   The format is in yaml file, for example you defined SERVICE_NAME and TEST_VAR as variables, you need to set the values they might have, in this case, news, payment, user.
   The context accompanied with the value is that when one value is specified, which context in that panel should use, this can be the case when you need to setup the TEST_VAR to local_payment in that panel when SERVICE_NAME is payment.

   ---
   vars:
     -
       name: SERVICE_NAME
       values:
         -
           context:
             TEST_VAR: local_news
           value: news
         -
           context:
             TEST_VAR: local_payment
           value: payment
         -
           context: ~
           value: user
     -
       name: TEST_VAR
       values:
         -
           context: ~
           value: global

3. Render it! The following command will call the Grafana API to render the template dashboard and finally create another rendered dashboard.

   go run cmd/grafops/grafops.go --host http://localhost:3000 -u RKAQZi9Zk --basic_auth $GRAFANA_USERNAME:$GRAFANA_PASSWORD -c ./config.yaml

Installation

go build -o grafops cmd/grafops/grafops.go
mv grafops /usr/local/bin

Local Test

This introduces how to render the test dashboard on your local machine.

1. Run Grafana Use docker to run Grafana dashboard in your local environment.

   docker run -p 3000:3000 grafana/grafana:6.5.0

2. Import Grafana test dashboard Access http://localhost:3000/dashboard/import and paste the samples/grafana_test_dashboard.json to the dashboard content.

1. Provision an API Key in Grafana Access http://localhost:3000/org/apikeys to create an editor/admin API key.

2. Render the dashboard

   go run cmd/grafops/grafops.go --host http://localhost:3000 -u VoUygmrWz --basic_auth <auth-key> -c config.test.yaml

   There will be a rendered dashboard created.