Important: This documentation is about an older version. It's relevant only to the release noted, many of the features and functions have been updated or replaced. Please view the current version.

Data sources

Graphite

Grafana Cloud Enterprise Open source

Graphite data source

Grafana includes built-in support for Graphite. This topic explains options, variables, querying, and other features specific to the Graphite data source, which include its feature-rich query editor.

For instructions on how to add a data source to Grafana, refer to the administration documentation. Only users with the organization administrator role can add data sources.

Once you’ve added the Graphite data source, you can configure it so that your Grafana instance’s users can create queries in its query editor when they build dashboards and use Explore.

Configure the data source

To access the data source configuration page:

Hover the cursor over the Configuration (gear) icon.
Select Data Sources.
Select the Graphite data source.

Set the data source’s basic configuration options carefully:

Name	Description
Name	Sets the name you use to refer to the data source in panels and queries.
Default	Sets whether the data source is pre-selected for new panels. You can set only one default data source per organization.
URL	Sets the HTTP protocol, IP, and port of your graphite-web or graphite-api installation.
Auth	For details, refer to Configure Authentication.
Basic Auth	Enables basic authentication to the data source.
User	Sets the user name for basic authentication.
Password	Sets the password for basic authentication.
Custom HTTP Headers	Click Add header to add a custom HTTP header.
Header	Defines the custom header name.
Value	Defines the custom header value.

You can also configure settings specific to the Graphite data source:

Name	Description
Version	Select your version of Graphite. If you are using Grafana Cloud Graphite, this should be set to `1.1.x`.
Type	Select your type of Graphite. If you are using Grafana Cloud Graphite, this should be set to `Default`.

Integrate with Loki

When you change the data source selection in Explore, Graphite queries are converted to Loki queries. Grafana extracts Loki label names and values from the Graphite queries according to mappings provided in the Graphite data source configuration. Queries using tags with seriesByTags() are also transformed without any additional setup.

Provision the data source

You can define and configure the data source in YAML files as part of Grafana’s provisioning system. For more information about provisioning, and for lists of common configuration options and JSON data options, refer to Provisioning data sources.

Provisioning example

apiVersion: 1

datasources:
  - name: Graphite
    type: graphite
    access: proxy
    url: http://localhost:8080
    jsonData:
      graphiteVersion: '1.1'

Query the data source

Grafana includes a Graphite-specific query editor to help you build queries. The query editor helps you quickly navigate the metric space, add functions, and change function parameters. It can handle all types of Graphite queries, including complex nested queries through the use of query references.

For details, refer to the query editor documentation.

Use template variables

Instead of hard-coding details such as server, application, and sensor names in metric queries, you can use variables. Grafana lists these variables in dropdown select boxes at the top of the dashboard to help you change the data displayed in your dashboard. Grafana refers to such variables as template variables.

For details, see the template variables documentation.