Grafana & Setup Grafana on AWS EC2 Instance

Grafana & Setup Grafana on AWS EC2 Instance

What is Grafana?

Grafana is a free tool designed for displaying and monitoring data. It allows users to ask questions about their data, create visual representations, receive alerts for critical events, and comprehend numerical data, regardless of where it's stored. Grafana is compatible with various data types, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Prometheus.

Key Features of Grafana:

Grafana offers several features, including:

  1. Powerful Dashboard Editor:

    • Creation of dynamic and visually appealing dashboards that respond to user needs.
  2. Support for Different Data Sources:

    • Compatibility with databases, time series databases, and log data.
  3. Diverse Data Presentation Options:

    • Multiple ways to display data, such as graphs, tables, gauges, and heat maps.
  4. Alerting Mechanism:

    • Rule-based alerts to notify users when specific data conditions are met.
  5. Access Control:

    • Management of dashboard and data source access for different users.
  6. Active Community Support:

    • A supportive community ready to assist and contribute to Grafana's improvement.

Why Choose Grafana?

Grafana is widely adopted for data visualization and monitoring due to its:

  • Robust and flexible dashboard editor.

  • Support for multiple data sources.

  • Diverse visualization options.

  • Alerting capabilities.

  • User management features.

  • Active community support.

It efficiently creates dynamic and visually appealing dashboards for gaining insights into system performance and health, integrating seamlessly with various data sources.

Monitoring Types Supported by Grafana:

Grafana supports various monitoring types, including:

  1. Infrastructure Monitoring:

    • Tracking and assessing the health and performance of infrastructure components.
  2. Application Monitoring:

    • Monitoring application performance metrics like response time and error rates.
  3. Log Monitoring:

    • Analyzing logs and generating visual representations of log data.
  4. IoT Device Monitoring:

    • Monitoring and visualizing data from IoT devices.
  5. Business Metrics Monitoring:

    • Keeping track of business metrics like sales figures and revenue.

Databases Compatible with Grafana:

Grafana seamlessly integrates with a range of databases, including:

  1. MySQL:

    • Visualizing and monitoring data stored in MySQL databases.
  2. PostgreSQL:

    • Querying, visualizing, and monitoring data within PostgreSQL databases.
  3. Elasticsearch:

    • Querying and visualizing data stored in Elasticsearch.
  4. Prometheus:

    • Collaborating effortlessly with the open-source monitoring toolkit.
  5. InfluxDB:

    • Visualizing and monitoring time-stamped data.
  6. OpenTSDB:

    • Visualizing and monitoring data stored in this time series database.

Metrics and Visualizations in Grafana:

In Grafana, metrics are numeric data points systematically gathered over time to evaluate system performance. Visualizations represent these metrics graphically through charts, graphs, and tables.

Grafana vs. Prometheus: Key Differences:

  1. Data Collection:

    • Prometheus focuses on collecting and storing time-series data.

    • Grafana serves as a visualization and alerting tool, retrieving data from various sources.

  2. Querying and Analysis:

    • Prometheus utilizes PromQL for real-time queries and analysis.

    • Grafana relies on data sources for querying and analytical capabilities.

  3. Visualization:

    • Grafana excels in data visualization with a wide range of options.

    • Prometheus emphasizes data collection and analysis.

  4. Alerting:

    • Grafana provides advanced alerting features.

    • Prometheus supports alerting with more limited capabilities.

  5. Ecosystem:

    • Prometheus is popular for monitoring Kubernetes clusters.

    • Grafana is versatile for monitoring and visualizing data from various sources beyond specific ecosystems.

Setup Grafana on AWS EC2 Instance

Task:

Setup Grafana in your local environment on AWS EC2.

Solution

Step 1: Proceed to the AWS console and initiate the launch of an EC2 instance.

Created EC2 instance named Grafana-server.

Step 2: In the security group of your EC2 instance, open port 3000 to authorize external entry for Grafana

Step 3: Once the instance is active, establish an SSH connection and Follow the provided Grafana instructions for system installation. Download the GPG keys and include them in the list of trusted keys:

wget -q -O - https://packages.grafana.com/gpg.key | sudo apt-key add

Step 4: incorporate the Grafana repository:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb https://packages.grafana.com/oss/deb stable main"

Step 5: Update the system and install grafana.

sudo apt get-update
sudo apt install grafana

Step 6: Initiate Grafana using the command:

sudo systemctl start grafana-server

Step 7: To enable automatic startup on boot, configure Grafana with:

sudo systemctl enable grafana-server

Step 8: Verify the status of Grafana.

Step 9: Navigate Grafana through the web interface by entering the IP address or domain name of your EC2 instance in a web browser, followed by the default Grafana port (3000). For instance:

Step 10: Lets, log in to Grafana using the default credentials (admin/admin) and begin creating your initial dashboards.

Hurray...! We have successfully installed Grafana on AWS EC2 instance.

Thanks,

Kishor Chavan