Documentation Grafana Mimir Get started

Get started with Grafana Mimir

You can get started with Grafana Mimir imperatively or declaratively:

• Imperatively: The written instructions that follow contain commands to help you start a single Mimir process. You would need to perform the commands again to start another Mimir process.

• Declaratively: The following video tutorial uses docker-compose to deploy multiple Mimir processes. Therefore, if you want to deploy multiple Mimir processes later, the majority of the configuration work will have already been done.

Before you begin

• Verify that you have installed either a Prometheus server or Grafana Alloy.
• Verify that you have installed Docker.

Download Grafana Mimir

In a terminal, run one of the following commands:

• Using Docker:

  bash Copy

  docker pull grafana/mimir:latest

• Using a local binary:

  Download the appropriate release asset for your operating system and architecture, and make it executable.

  For Linux with the AMD64 architecture:

  bash Copy

  curl -fLo mimir https://github.com/grafana/mimir/releases/latest/download/mimir-linux-amd64
  chmod +x mimir

Start Grafana Mimir

To run Grafana Mimir as a monolith and with local filesystem storage, write the following YAML configuration to a file named demo.yaml:

yaml Copy

# Do not use this configuration in production.
# It is for demonstration purposes only.
multitenancy_enabled: false

blocks_storage:
  backend: filesystem
  bucket_store:
    sync_dir: /tmp/mimir/tsdb-sync
  filesystem:
    dir: /tmp/mimir/data/tsdb
  tsdb:
    dir: /tmp/mimir/tsdb

compactor:
  data_dir: /tmp/mimir/compactor
  sharding_ring:
    kvstore:
      store: memberlist

distributor:
  ring:
    instance_addr: 127.0.0.1
    kvstore:
      store: memberlist

ingester:
  ring:
    instance_addr: 127.0.0.1
    kvstore:
      store: memberlist
    replication_factor: 1

ruler_storage:
  backend: filesystem
  filesystem:
    dir: /tmp/mimir/rules

server:
  http_listen_port: 9009
  log_level: error

store_gateway:
  sharding_ring:
    replication_factor: 1

Run Grafana Mimir

In a terminal, run one of the following commands:

• Using Docker:

  bash Copy

  docker network create grafanet
  
  docker run \
    --rm \
    --name mimir \
    --network grafanet \
    --publish 9009:9009 \
    --volume "$(pwd)"/demo.yaml:/etc/mimir/demo.yaml grafana/mimir:latest \
    --config.file=/etc/mimir/demo.yaml

• Using a local binary:

  bash Copy

  ./mimir --config.file=./demo.yaml

Grafana Mimir listens on port 9009.

Configure Prometheus to write to Grafana Mimir

Add the following YAML snippet to your Prometheus configuration file and restart the Prometheus server:

yaml Copy

remote_write:
  - url: http://localhost:9009/api/v1/push

The configuration for a Prometheus server that scrapes itself and writes those metrics to Grafana Mimir looks similar to this:

yaml Copy

remote_write:
  - url: http://localhost:9009/api/v1/push

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: prometheus
    honor_labels: true
    static_configs:
      - targets: ["localhost:9090"]

Configure Grafana Alloy to write to Grafana Mimir

Use the prometheus.remote_write component in Grafana Alloy to send metrics to Grafana Mimir. For example:

Copy

prometheus.remote_write "LABEL" {
  endpoint {
    url = http://localhost:9009/api/v1/push

    ...
  }

  ...
}

The configuration for Alloy that scrapes itself and writes those metrics to Grafana Mimir looks similar to this:

Copy

prometheus.exporter.self "self_metrics" {
}

prometheus.scrape "self_scrape" {
  targets    = prometheus.exporter.self.self_metrics.targets
  forward_to = [prometheus.remote_write.mimir.receiver]
}

prometheus.remote_write "mimir" {
  endpoint {
    url = "http://localhost:9009/api/v1/push"
  }
}

For more information about setting up Alloy, refer to prometheus.remote_write.

Monitor Grafana Mimir with the integration for Grafana Cloud

Integrate with Grafana Cloud to monitor the health of your Mimir system. The self-hosted Mimir integration for Grafana Cloud includes dashboards, as well as recording and alerting rules, to help monitor the health of your cluster. This integration uses Grafana Alloy to scrape and send metrics to Mimir.

For more information, refer to Self-hosted Grafana Mimir integration for Grafana Cloud.

Query data in Grafana

In a new terminal, run a local Grafana server using Docker:

bash Copy

docker run --rm --name=grafana --network=grafanet -p 3000:3000 grafana/grafana

Add Grafana Mimir as a Prometheus data source

1. In a browser, go to the Grafana server at http://localhost:3000/datasources.
2. Sign in using the default username admin and password admin.
3. Configure a new Prometheus data source to query the local Grafana Mimir server using the following settings:

   Field	Value
   Name	Mimir
   URL	http://mimir:9009/prometheus if you used Docker / http://localhost:9009/prometheus if you used local binary

To add a data source, refer to Add a data source.

Verify success

After you have completed the tasks in this Get started guide, you can query metrics in Grafana Explore as well as create dashboard panels using your newly configured Grafana Mimir data source.