Installing Grafana Mimir dashboards and alerts

Grafana Mimir is shipped with a comprehensive set of production-ready Grafana dashboards and alerts to monitor the state and health of a Mimir cluster.

Requirements

Grafana Mimir dashboards and alerts require specific labels to be set by Prometheus or Grafana Alloy when scraping your Mimir cluster metrics
Some dashboards require recording rules that you should install in your Prometheus

Install from package

Grafana Mimir provides ready to use Grafana dashboards in the .json format and Prometheus alerts in the .yaml format, that you can directly import into your Grafana installation and Prometheus config.

The packaged dashboards and alerts have been compiled from the sources using a default configuration and don’t allow you to customize the required metrics label names. If you need to customize the required metrics label names please choose one of the other installation options.

Download dashboards, recording rules and alerts from Grafana Mimir repository
Import dashboards in Grafana
Install recording rules and alerts in your Prometheus

Install from sources

Grafana Mimir dashboards and alerts are built using Jsonnet language and you can compile them from sources. If you choose this option, you can change the configuration to match your deployment, like customizing the required label names.

Checkout Mimir source code

git clone https://github.com/grafana/mimir.git

Review the mixin configuration at operations/mimir-mixin/config.libsonnet, and apply your changes if necessary.
Compile the mixin
bash
```
make build-mixin
```
Import the dashboards saved at operations/mimir-mixin-compiled/dashboards/ in Grafana
Install the recording rules saved at operations/mimir-mixin-compiled/rules.yaml in your Prometheus
Install the alerts saved at operations/mimir-mixin-compiled/alerts.yaml in your Prometheus

Install dashboards from Jsonnet mixin

In case you’re already using Jsonnet to define your infrastructure as a code, you can vendor the Grafana Mimir mixin directly into your infrastructure repository and configure it overriding the _config fields. Given the exact setup really depends on a case-by-case basis, the following instructions are not meant to be prescriptive but just show the main steps required to vendor the mixin.

Initialize Jsonnet
bash
```
jb init
```

Install Grafana Mimir mixin

jb install github.com/grafana/mimir/operations/mimir-mixin@main

Import and configure it

(import 'github.com/grafana/mimir/operations/mimir-mixin/mixin.libsonnet') + {
  _config+:: {
    // Override the Grafana Mimir mixin config here.
  },
}

Deploy mixin with Terraform

Based on Jsonnet configuration file, you can use Terraform to deploy the mixin in both Grafana and Grafana Mimir. To do so, you can use grafana/grafana, ovh/mixtool, and ovh/mimirtool providers.

Create a Terraform main.tf file:

# Specify which providers to use
terraform {
  required_version = ">= 1.3.5"
  required_providers {
    mixtool = {
      source  = "ovh/mixtool"
      version = "~> 0.1.1"
    }
    mimirtool = {
      source  = "ovh/mimirtool"
      version = "~> 0.1.1"
    }
    grafana = {
      source  = "grafana/grafana"
      version = "~> 1.32.0"
    }
  }
}

# Configure providers if needed
provider "grafana" {
  url  = "http://localhost:9000"
  auth = "admin:admin"
}

provider "mimirtool" {
  address   = "http://localhost:9009"
  tenant_id = "anonymous"
}

locals {
  mixin_source   = "custom.libsonnet"
  jsonnet_path   = "vendor"
}

# Build alerts
data "mixtool_alerts" "mimir" {
  source       = local.mixin_source
  jsonnet_path = [local.jsonnet_path]
}

# Build rules
data "mixtool_rules" "mimir" {
  source       = local.mixin_source
  jsonnet_path = [local.jsonnet_path]
}

# Build dashboards
data "mixtool_dashboards" "mimir" {
  source       = local.mixin_source
  jsonnet_path = [local.jsonnet_path]
}

# Deploy rules
resource "mimirtool_ruler_namespace" "rules" {
  namespace   = "rules_community"
  config_yaml = data.mixtool_rules.mimir.rules
}

# Deploy alerts
resource "mimirtool_ruler_namespace" "alerts" {
  namespace   = "alerts_community"
  config_yaml = data.mixtool_alerts.mimir.alerts
}

# Deploy dashboards
resource "grafana_dashboard" "mimir" {
  for_each    = data.mixtool_dashboards.mimir.dashboards
  config_json = each.value
}

Initialize Terraform:
bash
```
terraform init
```
Review the changes that Terraform would apply to your infrastructure:
bash
```
terraform plan
```
Deploy the changes:
bash
```
terraform apply
```