Use Grafana As The UI

Since 9.4.0, SkyWalking provide PromQL Service. You can choose Grafana as the SkyWalking UI. About the installation and how to use please refer to the official document.

Notice <1>, Gafana is AGPL-3.0 license, which is very different from Apache 2.0. Please follow AGPL 3.0 license requirements.

Notice <2>, SkyWalking always uses its native UI as first class. All visualization features are only available on native UI. Grafana UI is an extension on our support of PromQL APIs. We don’t maintain or promise the complete Grafana UI dashboard setup.

Configure Data Source

In the data source config panel, chose the Prometheus and set the url to the OAP server address, the default port is 9090.

Configure Dashboards

Dashboards Settings

The following steps are the example of config a General Service dashboard:

  1. Create a dashboard named General Service. A layer is recommended as a dashboard.
  2. Configure variables for the dashboard: After configure, you can select the service/instance/endpoint on the top of the dashboard:

Add Panels

The following contents show how to add several typical metrics panels. General settings:

  1. Chose the metrics and chart.
  2. Set Query options --> Min interval = 1m, because the metrics min time bucket in SkyWalking is 1m.
  3. Add PromQL expressions, use the variables configured above for the labels then you can select the labels value from top. Note: Some metrics values may be required calculations to match units.
  4. Select the returned labels you want to show on panel.
  5. Test query and save the panel.

Common Value Metrics

  1. For example service_apdex and Time series chart.
  2. Add PromQL expression, the metric scope is Service, so add labels service and layer for match.
  3. Set Connect null values --> Always and Show points --> Always because when the query interval > 1hour or 1day SkyWalking return the hour/day step metrics values.

Labeled Value Metrics

  1. For example service_percentile and Time series chart.
  2. Add PromQL expressions, the metric scope is Service, add labels service and layer for match. And it’s a labeled value metric, add labels='0,1,2,3,4' filter the result label, and addrelabels='P50,P75,P90,P95,P99' rename the result label.
  3. Set Connect null values --> Always and Show points --> Always because when the query interval > 1hour or 1day SkyWalking return the hour/day step metrics values.

Sort Metrics

  1. For example service_instance_cpm and Bar gauge chart.
  2. Add PromQL expressions, add labels parent_service and layer for match, add top_n='10' and order='DES' filter the result.
  3. Set the Calculation --> Latest*.

Sampled Records

Same as the Sort Metrics.

Preview on demo.skywalking.a.o

SkyWalking community provides a preview site for services of General and Service Mesh layers from the demo environment. You could take a glance through Preview metrics on Grafana of the demo deployment.

Notice, we don’t provide all setups due to our monitoring target expanding fast. This demo is for helping you understand the above documents only.