Refer to [Add a data source]({{< relref "add-a-data-source.md" >}}) for instructions on how to add a data source to Grafana. Only organization admins can add data sources.
To access Graphite settings, hover your mouse over the **Configuration** (gear) icon, then click **Data Sources**, and then click the Graphite data source.
Access mode controls how requests to the data source will be handled. Server should be the preferred way if nothing else is stated.
### Server access mode (default)
All requests will be made from the browser to Grafana backend/server which in turn will forward the requests to the data source and by that circumvent possible Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) requirements. The URL needs to be accessible from the Grafana backend/server if you select this access mode.
All requests will be made from the browser directly to the data source and may be subject to Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) requirements. The URL needs to be accessible from the browser if you select this access mode.
Click **Select metric** to start navigating the metric space. Once you start, you can continue using the mouse or keyboard arrow keys. You can select a wildcard and still continue.
Some functions like aliasByNode support an optional second argument. To add an argument, hover your mouse over the first argument and then click the `+` symbol that appears. To remove the second optional parameter, click on it and leave it blank and the editor will remove it.
If you want consistent ordering, use sortByName. This can be particularly annoying when you have the same labels on multiple graphs, and they are both sorted differently and using different colors. To fix this, use `sortByName()`.
You can reference queries by the row “letter” that they’re on (similar to Microsoft Excel). If you add a second query to a graph, you can reference the first query simply by typing in #A. This provides an easy and convenient way to build compounded queries.
Occasionally one would like to see multiple time series plotted on the same graph. For example we might want to see how the CPU is being utilized on a machine. You might
initially create the graph by adding a query for each time series, such as `cpu.percent.user.g`,
`cpu.percent.system.g`, and so on. This results in *n* queries made to the data source, which is inefficient.
To be more efficient one can use wildcards in your search, returning all the time series in one query. For example, `cpu.percent.*.g`.
### Modify the metric name in my tables or charts
Use `alias` functions to change metric names on Grafana tables or graphs For example `aliasByNode()` or `aliasSub()`.
Graphite 1.1 introduced tags and Grafana added support for Graphite queries with tags in version 5.0. To create a variable using tag values, use the Grafana functions `tags` and `tag_values`.
The example below shows how to use `__searchFilter` as part of the query field to enable searching for `server` while the user types in the dropdown select box.
Multi-value variables in tag queries use the advanced formatting syntax introduced in Grafana 5.0 for variables: `{var:regex}`. Non-tag queries will use the default glob formatting for multi-value variables.
Example of a tag expression with regex formatting and using the Equal Tilde operator, `=~`:
queries via the Dashboard menu / Annotations view.
Graphite supports two ways to query annotations. A regular metric query, for this you use the `Graphite query` textbox. A Graphite events query, use the `Graphite event tags` textbox,
Grafana exposes metrics for Graphite on the `/metrics` endpoint. For detailed instructions, refer to [Internal Grafana metrics]({{< relref "../administration/metrics.md">}}).
It's now possible to configure data sources using config files with Grafana's provisioning system. You can read more about how it works and all the settings you can set for data sources on the [provisioning docs page]({{< relref "../administration/provisioning/#datasources" >}})
