Grafana Cheat Sheet

Installation

apt install grafanaDebian/Ubuntu
yum install grafanaCentOS/RHEL
brew install grafanamacOS
docker run grafanaDocker
Default: :3000Web UI port

Panel Types

Time seriesLine/area charts
StatSingle value
GaugeRadial gauge
Bar gaugeHorizontal bars
TableData table
HeatmapDensity plot
LogsLog viewer

Data Sources

PrometheusMetrics DB
InfluxDBTime series DB
ElasticsearchLogs & search
LokiLog aggregation
MySQL/PostgreSQLSQL databases
CloudWatchAWS metrics

Keyboard Shortcuts

dDashboard settings
eEdit panel
vView panel fullscreen
sSave dashboard
rRefresh dashboard
EscExit edit/view mode

PromQL Examples (Prometheus)

# Request rate per second
rate(http_requests_total[5m])

# 95th percentile latency
histogram_quantile(0.95, rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket[5m]))

# CPU usage percentage
100 - (avg(irate(node_cpu_seconds_total{mode="idle"}[5m])) * 100)

# Memory usage
node_memory_MemTotal_bytes - node_memory_MemAvailable_bytes
          

Template Variables

# Query variable (get values from datasource)
label_values(up, job)                   # Get all job labels
label_values(node_cpu_seconds_total, cpu) # Get CPU cores

# Use in queries with $variable or ${variable}
rate(http_requests_total{job="$job"}[5m])

# Multi-value with regex
{instance=~"$instance"}               # Matches selected values
          

Variable Types

QueryFrom datasource
CustomStatic values
ConstantFixed value
IntervalTime interval
Data sourceSelect source
Text boxFree text input

Alert Rules

ConditionQuery threshold
For durationPending time
LabelsAlert metadata
AnnotationsAlert details
Contact pointsNotification dest

HTTP API Examples

# Get all dashboards
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" http://localhost:3000/api/search

# Get dashboard by UID
curl http://localhost:3000/api/dashboards/uid/my-dashboard

# Create API key
curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"mykey","role":"Admin"}' \
  http://admin:admin@localhost:3000/api/auth/keys
          

Config Paths

/etc/grafana/Config directory
grafana.iniMain config
/var/lib/grafana/Data directory
/var/log/grafana/Log files

Time Range Syntax

now-5mLast 5 minutes
now-1hLast hour
now-24hLast 24 hours
now-7dLast 7 days
now/dToday so far

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