Creating and managing folders, data sources, and dashboards using Grizzly

Learn how to add a data sources, folders and dashboard, using Grizzly.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you should have the following available:

A Grafana Cloud account
An existing Grafana Cloud stack with a Grafana API Key
Grizzly installed on your machine

Authentication Setup

To authenticate with the Grizzly API, you must create environment variables. Run the following commands to create environment variables named GRAFANA_URL and GRAFANA_TOKEN:

export GRAFANA_URL=<Grafana-instance-url>
export GRAFANA_TOKEN=<Grafana-API-Key>

Replace the following field values:

<Grafana-instance-url> with the URL of your Grafana instance.
<Grafana-API-Key> with API key from the Grafana instance.

Add a data source

The following steps use the InfluxDB data source. The required arguments vary depending on the data source you select.

Create a file named data-source.yml and add the following:

apiVersion: grizzly.grafana.com/v1alpha1
kind: Datasource
metadata:
  name: <data-source-name>
spec:
  name: <data-source-name>
  type: influxdb
  url: <data-source-url>
  database: <db-name>
  user: <username>
  secureJsonData:
    password: '<password>'
  uid: <uid>
  id: <id>
  access: proxy

Replace the following field values:
- <data-source-name> with the name of the data source to be added in Grafana.
- <data-source-url> with URL of your data source.
- <username> with the username for authenticating with your data source.
- <password> with the password for authenticating with your data source.
- <db-name> with name of your database.
- <id> with the ID for your data source in Grafana.
- <uid> wth the UID for your data source in Grafana.

Add a folder

The following YAML definition creates a folder in your Grafana instance.

Create a file named folder.yml and add the following:

apiVersion: grizzly.grafana.com/v1alpha1
kind: DashboardFolder
metadata:
  name: <folder-name>
spec:
  title: <folder-name>
  uid: <uid>

Replace the following field values:
- <folder-name> with the name of the folder to be added in Grafana.
- <uid> with the UID for your folder in Grafana.

Add a dashboard to the folder

Use the following YAML definition to create a simple dashboard in the Grafana instance folder from the previous step. To add more than a title and UID to the dashboard, you can convert your dashboard JSON config to YAML and paste it under spec.

Create a file named dashboard.yml and add the following:

apiVersion: grizzly.grafana.com/v1alpha1
kind: Dashboard
metadata:
  folder: <folder-name>
  name: influxdb-cloud-demos
spec:
  title: InfluxDB Cloud Demos
  uid: influxdb-cloud-demos

Replace the following field values:
- <folder-name> with the name of the folder created in the previous step.

Using Grizzly CLI

In a terminal, run the following commands from the directory where all of the YAML definitions are located.

Add the data source.
shell
```
grr apply data-source.yml
```
Add a folder.
shell
```
grr apply folder.yml
```
Add a dashboard to the folder.
shell
```
grr apply dashboard.yml
```

Validation

Once you apply the configurations using the Grizzly CLI, you should be able to verify the following:

A new data source (InfluxDB in this example) is visible in Grafana.
A new dashboard and folder in Grafana. In the following image a dashboard named InfluxDB Cloud Demos was created inside the Demos folder.