Setup SMTP in Grafana

Introduction

Grafana is a tools for visualisation dashboard monitoring which work together with various datasource.
In its use, we'll need SMTP activated to do some functionality like email alerting, notification, or invitation request.

Assumptions

In this page, we assumed that we already know about Grafana and have it run in a server.
In our example, we are going to use Google Gmail as SMTP server.

Step by Step

Step 1 : Prepare Gmail Account

Just go to https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureapps and set Allow less secure apps to ON.
We need to do this to our Gmail account to make it can receive connections from external programs.
If we use corporate SMTP, just contact our IT support to do the same.

Step 2 : Update and install SSMTP

We'll update our Grafana server and install SMTP on it.

root@gejoreuy:~# sudo apt-get update
root@gejoreuy:~# sudo apt-get install ssmtp

Step 3 : Edit SSMTP Configuration

Go to /etc/ssmtp/ directory and edit ssmtp.conf file like below configuration.

root@gejoreuy:~# vi /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf
root=gejoreuy@gmail.com
mailhub=smtp.gmail.com:587
FromLineOverride=YES
AuthUser=gejoreuy@gmail.com
AuthPass=MyPassword
UseTLS=YES
UseSTARTTLS=YES

In our example, we are using the Gmail account gejoreuy@gmail.com with password MyPassword.

Step 4 : Test SMTP Server

Use the following command to send an email using the command-line.

root@gejoreuy:~# echo "E-Mail using the command-line" | ssmtp gejoreuy@gmail.com

Check our inbox for the test message that we just sent.
If the test was successfully, we may use our Grafana with SMTP.