Install Grafana in Linux CentOS 7 with Prometheus Data Source

Introduction

Grafana is a multi-platform open source analytics and interactive visualization web application.
Refer to Grafana official page to know more about this tools : https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest

Assumption

We'll use Grafana as visualization of our monitoring tools.
In this case, we'll use Grafana with Prometheus as data source.
We assumpt that we already have a monitoring server with Prometheus which called monitoring-server that already has node-exporter target.
And we'll install Grafana in same server with this Prometheus which already running.

Step by Step

Step 1 : Make Sure Selinux is Disable

Check selinux is disabled or enabled :

[root@monitoring-server ~]# getenforce

If it's enabled, disable it :

[root@monitoring-server ~]# vi /etc/sysconfig/selinux

Change SELINUX=enforcing to SELINUX=disabled, then reboot the server :

[root@monitoring-server ~]# reboot

Step 2 : Create Grafana Repo File

Create repo file :

[root@monitoring-server ~]# vi /etc/yum.repos.d/grafana.repo

Fill it with below :

[grafana]
name=grafana
baseurl=https://packages.grafana.com/oss/rpm
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.grafana.com/gpg.key
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

Step 3 : Install Grafana

[root@monitoring-server ~]# yum install grafana

Step 4 : Install Related Fonts

[root@monitoring-server ~]# yum install fontconfig
[root@monitoring-server ~]# yum install freetype*
[root@monitoring-server ~]# yum install urw-fonts

Step 5 : Start and Enable Grafana

[root@monitoring-server ~]# systemctl start grafana-server
[root@monitoring-server ~]# systemctl enable grafana-server
[root@monitoring-server ~]# systemctl status grafana-server

Step 6 : Enable Grafana Port

[root@monitoring-server ~]# firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=3000/tcp
[root@monitoring-server ~]# firewall-cmd --reload

Access Grafana page from http://monitoring-server:3000

How to Use

Login & Reset Default Password

Fresh Grafana will only have admin user with default password : admin.
Reset this default password with the secure one.

Add Prometheus Data Source

Go to data source page. Then add Prometheus as the data source.
Use Prometheus server address as the value. Like : http://monitoring-server:9090
Since we set Grafana in same server with Prometheus, we set the value as : http://localhost:9090

Set Grafana Dashboard

There are many types of Grafana dashboard.
As example in our assumption that we already have Prometheus with node-exporter target, we can set Grafana dashboard for node-exporter.
For node-exporter dashboard, we can import it with adding the dashboard code. Grafana dashboard code for node-exporter (full) : 1860.
Or we also can set the dashboard using the dashboard JSON file that we can download from Grafana official page.
If we already have Prometheus with various exporter targets, we also can set Grafana dashboard which suitable for it.