grafana/docs/sources/features/datasources/prometheus.md

+++ title = "Using Prometheus in Grafana" description = "Guide for using Prometheus in Grafana" keywords = ["grafana", "prometheus", "guide"] type = "docs" aliases = ["/docs/grafana/latest/datasources/prometheus"] [menu.docs] name = "Prometheus" parent = "datasources" weight = 1 +++

Using Prometheus in Grafana

Grafana includes built-in support for Prometheus.

Adding the data source

1. Open the side menu by clicking the Grafana icon in the top header.
2. In the side menu under the Dashboards link you should find a link named Data Sources.
3. Click the + Add data source button in the top header.
4. Select Prometheus from the Type dropdown.

NOTE: If you're not seeing the Data Sources link in your side menu it means that your current user does not have the Admin role for the current organization.

Data source options

Name	Description
Name	The data source name. This is how you refer to the data source in panels and queries.
Default	Default data source means that it will be pre-selected for new panels.
Url	The URL of your Prometheus server, e.g. http://prometheus.example.org:9090.
Access	Server (default) = URL needs to be accessible from the Grafana backend/server, Browser = URL needs to be accessible from the browser.
Basic Auth	Enable basic authentication to the Prometheus data source.
User	User name for basic authentication.
Password	Password for basic authentication.
Scrape interval	Set this to the typical scrape and evaluation interval configured in Prometheus. Defaults to 15s.
Custom Query Parameters	Add custom parameters to the Prometheus query URL. For example timeout, partial_response, dedup or max_source_resolution. Multiple parameters should be concatenated together with an '&'.

Query editor

Open a graph in edit mode by click the title > Edit (or by pressing e key while hovering over panel).

{{< docs-imagebox img="/img/docs/v45/prometheus_query_editor_still.png" animated-gif="/img/docs/v45/prometheus_query_editor.gif" >}}

Name	Description
Query expression	Prometheus query expression, check out the Prometheus documentation.
Legend format	Controls the name of the time series, using name or pattern. For example {{hostname}} will be replaced with label value for the label hostname.
Min step	An additional lower limit for the step parameter of Prometheus range queries and for the $__interval variable. The limit is absolute and not modified by the Resolution setting.
Resolution	1/1 sets both the $__interval variable and the step parameter of Prometheus range queries such that each pixel corresponds to one data point. For better performance, lower resolutions can be picked. 1/2 only retrieves a data point for every other pixel, and 1/10 retrieves one data point per 10 pixels. Note that both Min time interval and Min step limit the final value of $__interval and step.
Metric lookup	Search for metric names in this input field.
Format as	Switch between Table, Time series or Heatmap. Table will only work in the Table panel. Heatmap is suitable for displaying metrics of the Histogram type on a Heatmap panel. Under the hood, it converts cumulative histograms to regular ones and sorts series by the bucket bound.
Instant	Perform an "instant" query, to return only the latest value that Prometheus has scraped for the requested time series. Instant queries return results much faster than normal range queries. Use them to look up label sets.
Min time interval	This value multiplied by the denominator from the Resolution setting sets a lower limit to both the $__interval variable and the step parameter of Prometheus range queries. Defaults to Scrape interval as set in the data source options.

NOTE: Grafana slightly modifies the request dates for queries to align them with the dynamically calculated step. This ensures consistent display of metrics data but can result in a small gap of data at the right edge of a graph.

Instant queries

The Prometheus datasource allows you to run "instant" queries, which queries only the latest value. You can visualize the results in a table panel to see all available labels of a timeseries.

Instant query results are made up only of one datapoint per series but can be shown in the graph panel with the help of [series overrides]({{< relref "../panels/graph/#series-overrides" >}}). To show them in the graph as a latest value point, add a series override and select Points > true. To show a horizontal line across the whole graph, add a series override and select Transform > constant.

Support for constant series overrides is available from Grafana v6.4

Templating

Instead of hard-coding things like server, application and sensor name in your metric queries, you can use variables in their place. Variables are shown as dropdown select boxes at the top of the dashboard. These dropdowns makes it easy to change the data being displayed in your dashboard.

Check out the [Templating]({{< relref "../../reference/templating.md" >}}) documentation for an introduction to the templating feature and the different types of template variables.

Query variable

Variable of the type Query allows you to query Prometheus for a list of metrics, labels or label values. The Prometheus data source plugin provides the following functions you can use in the Query input field.

Name	Description
label_names()	Returns a list of label names.
label_values(label)	Returns a list of label values for the label in every metric.
label_values(metric, label)	Returns a list of label values for the label in the specified metric.
metrics(metric)	Returns a list of metrics matching the specified metric regex.
query_result(query)	Returns a list of Prometheus query result for the query.

For details of metric names, label names and label values are please refer to the Prometheus documentation.

Using interval and range variables

Support for $__range, $__range_s and $__range_ms only available from Grafana v5.3

It's possible to use some global built-in variables in query variables; $__interval, $__interval_ms, $__range, $__range_s and $__range_ms, see [Global built-in variables]({{< relref "../../reference/templating/#global-built-in-variables" >}}) for more information. These can be convenient to use in conjunction with the query_result function when you need to filter variable queries since label_values function doesn't support queries.

Make sure to set the variable's refresh trigger to be On Time Range Change to get the correct instances when changing the time range on the dashboard.

Example usage:

Populate a variable with the the busiest 5 request instances based on average QPS over the time range shown in the dashboard:

Query: query_result(topk(5, sum(rate(http_requests_total[$__range])) by (instance)))
Regex: /"([^"]+)"/

Populate a variable with the instances having a certain state over the time range shown in the dashboard, using $__range_s:

Query: query_result(max_over_time(<metric>[${__range_s}s]) != <state>)
Regex:

Using variables in queries

There are two syntaxes:

• $<varname> Example: rate(http_requests_total{job=~"$job"}[5m])
• [[varname]] Example: rate(http_requests_total{job=~"job"}[5m])

Why two ways? The first syntax is easier to read and write but does not allow you to use a variable in the middle of a word. When the Multi-value or Include all value options are enabled, Grafana converts the labels from plain text to a regex compatible string. Which means you have to use =~ instead of =.

Annotations

[Annotations]({{< relref "../../reference/annotations.md" >}}) allows you to overlay rich event information on top of graphs. You add annotation queries via the Dashboard menu / Annotations view.

Prometheus supports two ways to query annotations.

• A regular metric query
• A Prometheus query for pending and firing alerts (for details see Inspecting alerts during runtime)

The step option is useful to limit the number of events returned from your query.

Getting Grafana metrics into Prometheus

Since 4.6.0 Grafana exposes metrics for Prometheus on the /metrics endpoint. We also bundle a dashboard within Grafana so you can get started viewing your metrics faster. You can import the bundled dashboard by going to the data source edit page and click the dashboard tab. There you can find a dashboard for Grafana and one for Prometheus. Import and start viewing all the metrics!

Configure the data source with provisioning

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" >}})

Here are some provisioning examples for this data source.

apiVersion: 1

datasources:
  - name: Prometheus
    type: prometheus
    access: proxy
    url: http://localhost:9090