Grafana 11 from ZERO to advanced

Explore observability and its three pillars—metrics, logs, and traces—and how they enable diagnosing problems, resolving incidents, and improving performance in distributed and cloud environments.

Introduce Grafana as an open source platform to visualize and analyze data, create panels and dashboards, and display information from databases, servers, and other sources to support decision making.

Explore the history of Grafana, from its 2014 creation by Torkel Odegaard while using Graphite, through Kibana-inspired beginnings to version ten, highlighting its visualization and monitoring prominence.

Explore Grafana deployment options—open source, enterprise with premium plugins and 24/7 support, and cloud service—plus a free tier with 10,000 metrics, 50GB profile, and 50GB logs.

Use the Grafana Play playground to test dashboards and visualizations without installing software, while you learn from scratch how to install Grafana, create data sources, and build dashboards.

Explore Grafana Labs' LGTM stack: Loki for log management, Tempo for tracing, and Mimir for metrics storage, with Grafana visualization and Prometheus compatibility.

Explore downloading and installing Grafana on Linux, macOS, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes, and Grafana Cloud, including Docker and cloud options and nightly builds.

Download and install Grafana on Windows, choose between enterprise and open source, use the standalone binaries, start the Grafana server, and access the admin login on localhost:3000.

Install Grafana on Linux with a package manager, using Ubuntu as an example; download, install, start the Grafana service, and log in at localhost:3000 to change the default admin password.

Install grafana 11 on linux in standalone mode by downloading with wget, unpacking tar.gz, and launching grafana server. Then sign in with admin/admin at http://localhost:3000 and change the default password.

Install Grafana in docker with a simple docker run command, choosing enterprise or OSS, map ports (3000 and 4000), and run multiple containers for development, pre, and production.

Create a Grafana Cloud account, use the free forever plan with 10k Prometheus metrics, 50 gigas of logs, traces, and 50 gigas of profiles, and choose a region to deploy.

Explore Grafana's key directories after installation, focusing on conf, bin (server and client), data, alerts, logs, docs, and plugins, with note on Linux packaging differences.

Modify Grafana configuration using a custom ini file by copying the sample ini, uncommenting the properties, and changing the http port from 3000 to 4000, then restart Grafana.

Explore Grafana’s web console version 11.1.0, including the home welcome screen, tutorials, dashboards, data sources, and news. Learn to use help, search, profile settings, language, and dashboard JSON properties.

Navigate the Grafana 11 web console, master dashboards, explore data queries, and set up alerts. Connect data sources with plugins, manage plugins and licenses, and configure users and organizations.

Grafana defines a dashboard as an interactive visual environment that combines panels from multiple data sources to display data, using databases, Prometheus, and various visualizations.

Discover the four-step dashboard construction process in Grafana—data sources, plugins, queries, and transformations—and how plugins convert diverse sources into Grafana's universal data frames for analysis.

Create your first Grafana dashboard using the Grafana data source, add visualizations, and save a time-series panel while organizing dashboards with folders.

Learn to load a CSV file and create a data source in Grafana, then build your first dashboard with a CSV visualization by installing and using the CSV plugin.

Create a Grafana 11 data source for a CSV file over HTTP, name it annual sales, and test the connection before proceeding to build the first dashboard.

Create your first dashboard panel from the annual sales csv data source, convert the sales field to numeric to render a bar chart, and save the dashboard.

Modify some graph properties teaches how to edit a bar chart panel in Grafana 11, adjusting title, orientation, labels, spacing, bar radius, tooltips, axes, legend, and aggregations, then save.

Add a new table panel to a Grafana dashboard, converting from time series to a table, set month and sales, adjust headers, pagination, alignment, filters, and totals.

Add a new row to organize panels in a Grafana dashboard, move panels between rows, rename the row, and delete the row with its panels or delete only the row.

Discover how to create and manage folders in Grafana 11, organize dashboards and panels, use subfolders, move items between folders, and visualize folders as hierarchies while managing permissions and deletions.

Visualize time series data with Grafana, a viewer not a database, by connecting to tsdbs like Prometheus and InfluxDB and using Telegraf or exporters to pull metrics with labels.

Install the infinity json connector in grafana 11, then configure a new data source named web server to read a json file of web server requests.

Create a time series dashboard in grafana 11 by configuring the web server data source, adjusting time and numeric fields, and switching between table and chart views.

Learn to work with time ranges in Grafana 11, from last five minutes to absolute time range, and to zoom and refresh graphs of web server requests.

Save and rename the dashboard; edit the panel to adjust title, legend, and time zone, visualize max value, and explore graph styles, lines, bars, or points with opacity and gradients.

Discover Prometheus, an open source time series data collector that uses a multidimensional data model with labels, queries via Promql, supports alerts, while Grafana visualizes its data.

Explore the Prometheus architecture, including the time series database and http server, plus targets and exporters. Understand push and pull with a pushgateway, service discovery, and PromQL for clients.

Learn how to monitor a Linux server with Prometheus and visualize metrics in Grafana, using node exporter, with architecture options including Docker, virtual machines, or Kubernetes environments.

Download Prometheus for Linux from prometheus.io, extract the tar.gz package, and inspect the Prometheus yml configuration to understand global settings, scrape configs, and self-monitoring.

Install the node exporter on a Linux server (Fedora) to expose system metrics for Prometheus on port 9100, demonstrating available metrics and how to enable or disable them.

Configure Prometheus to scrape node exporter metrics every 15 seconds by editing prometheus.yml and adding fedora target on port 9100, verify via the Prometheus web UI and prepare Grafana integration.

Integrate Prometheus with Grafana by creating a Prometheus data source and connecting to the server over port 9090. Visualize node exporter metrics and memory data in Grafana dashboards.

Explore Grafana panel options like view, share, and link access with dark or light themes and locked time ranges, and inspect json and query details.

Learn to use Grafana's auto refresh, switch between manual and automatic updates, and configure the dashboard time range and refresh interval for live data.

Add a query to a Grafana panel to display multiple metrics, such as free memory and total memory, by editing, naming queries, selecting metrics, and running the query.

Explore how Grafana 11 integrates PromQL with Prometheus to build panels, compare builder and code modes, and query CPU usage across modes using PromQL aggregations and metric types.

Explore gauge visualizations to monitor memory usage against thresholds using PromQL, set min and max, choose units percent, and configure color-coded alerts.

Stress test memory on a Linux server using the stress tool to drive Grafana memory indicators from green to red, validating thresholds and real-time updates.

Learn to add a second Grafana server using Docker and Prometheus, install node exporter in an Ubuntu container, and configure Prometheus targets to view metrics in Grafana.

Explore label filters in Grafana 11 to filter metrics by instance, job, CPU, and mode, and see how dashboards visualize data from multiple servers.

Create a bar gauge chart in Grafana and customize the legend and labels to display per-CPU mode usage from Prometheus CPU metrics.

Import ready-made Grafana dashboards to accelerate setup, explore node exporter dashboards via an ID or JSON file, then customize panels and data sources like Prometheus.

Set up Prometheus in Docker to enable quick testing and multiple environments, create a dedicated network, map Prometheus.yml, run a container on port 9500, and verify at http://localhost:9500.

Set up a second Prometheus environment with Docker by creating two Debian servers, installing node exporter on each, and updating the Prometheus yml file to monitor targets on port 9100.

Set up a second Prometheus environment with Docker and connect it to Grafana to build a dashboard visualizing memory metrics from two servers via port 9500.

Explore using the Prometheus node-exporter image in Docker to quickly deploy nodes for testing. Configure targets with the 9100 port and reload Prometheus after adding new nodes.

Set up a docker-based lab with two Prometheus servers and four node exporters using prom one.yml and prom two.yml, and configure Grafana data sources development and testing.

Master Grafana 11 by learning to assign separate timeframes to panels through relative time and query options, enabling development and testing panels to show last 30 minutes independently.

Set up and monitor a Windows server with Prometheus and Windows exporter, configure Prometheus yml, run exporters on port 9182, and visualize metrics in Grafana 11.

Install the MSI file to run the Windows exporter as a service, then start, stop, and enable automatic startup at boot. Verify in a browser that it operates as expected.

Import a Windows monitoring dashboard in Grafana 11 using the Windows exporter. Import via id or json, rename to Windows Server, set data source to Windows, and customize panels.

Explore how Grafana variables create dynamic, interactive dashboards by driving queries, titles, and links; learn types like custom, query, interval, data source, and text template.

Create and use custom variables in Grafana 11 to build dynamic dashboards, using a title variable with values development, testing, and production in panel titles.

Create and use text box variables to filter dashboards with user entered values, enabling dynamic, more focused queries on call center data.

Explore Grafana query variables to build dynamic dashboards, use the custom variable workflow, and apply label value filters with Prometheus and CSV data sources for server selection.

Learn to use Grafana data source variables to dynamically switch between Prometheus data sources, configure an environment variable, and apply it to dashboard panels for seamless data source swapping.

Create and use an interval variable in Grafana 11 to vary each panel's refresh interval, demonstrated with Prometheus and InfluxDB data sources.

Learn to create ad hoc variables as instantaneous filters in Grafana dashboards, attach them to a data source, and build dynamic panels using labels, instances, and Prometheus jobs.

Tag dashboards in Grafana to locate and create links, then search by tag with a filter, using cumulative tags to refine results across dashboards.

Create and manage links in Grafana dashboards, adding external URLs and internal dashboard links with tooltips, icons, time-range inheritance, open-in-new-tab, and display as buttons or lists.

Learn how to add and manage panel links within Grafana panels and dashboards, including titles, urls, and opening options, to drill down to related panels and share links.

Add descriptive text to panels to display a quick info icon and tooltip next to the dashboard title, by entering details in the panel options description field.

Learn how Grafana dashboard versioning works, saving dashboards to create versions and view the latest version. Compare changes between versions and restore a previous state, including adding and restoring links.

Learn how Grafana snapshots quickly share and back up dashboards and panels, choosing local or snapshots.io publishing, with optional expiration and read-only access.

Learn how to create and use Grafana library panels—sharable panels saved in a library, shared across dashboards, and updated centrally through import, linking, and unlinking.

Publish a dashboard as public in Grafana 11, noting variables aren't supported, and that public access depends on data sources while query execution may increase costs.

Inspect panels in Grafana to view data, queries, and JSON structures, download CSV or Excel exports, and explore query inspector for raw request and response details.

Learn to use Grafana explorer to query data sources without dashboards, compare queries with split view, and track memory metrics like available and total memory in dashboards.

Connect to a MySQL database to collect statistics and to query tables for dashboards, using Grafana's native MySQL connector or Prometheus mysqld exporter.

Connect Grafana's built-in MySQL connector to a MySQL or MariaDB database, load the products table, and use the data source to explore and visualize charts.

Create your first Grafana dashboard using a MySQL data source, build a bar chart by grouping units sold by product name and applying a sum aggregation.

Learn to create stat type charts in Grafana, highlighting total units sold and other calculations by choosing last, first, min, max, average, or total values, with color and display options.

Learn to measure MySQL database space in Grafana 11 by writing custom SQL queries, building stat panels and bar charts, aliasing columns, setting megabyte units, and saving a dashboard.

Learn how histograms visualize numerical data distributions in Grafana using bins and buckets to count occurrences across defined thresholds. See daily sales and call volumes to illustrate bucket ranges.

Explore how to build a histogram in Grafana 11 using a time series chart and bucket sizing to visualize sales units, adjust thresholds, and apply an offset bucket.

Learn to monitor MySQL with Prometheus by setting up the mysqld_exporter: create an exporter user with necessary permissions, download the exporter, and prepare to launch it.

Configure the mysqld_exporter for Prometheus by downloading, extracting, creating a my.cnf with credentials, and launching the exporter to feed MySQL metrics to Prometheus for Grafana dashboards.

Configure Prometheus to read mysqld_exporter metrics by adding a MySQL job with configs on port 9104, then build Grafana dashboards filtered by job to monitor MySQL uptime and memory usage.

Import a MySQL dashboard by downloading its JSON and uploading it to Grafana, then select the MySQL data source to view panels on connections, client activity, questions, and cache metrics.

Learn to create a SQL Server on AWS RDS using the Express edition, enable public access, set admin credentials, connect via port 1433, and delete the database after the course.

Connect Grafana to Microsoft SQL Server by adding a data source, configuring the host and authentication, and building a dashboard panel to visualize memory usage in megabytes.

Create a pie chart in Grafana to show space used by each database, adjust value calculations, switch to doughnut, and customize labels, units, and legend for clear visualization.