I am trying to know about GRAFANA advantages over other tools.Can anybody list what are all the metrics that GRAFANA Displays/Collects ? This helps a lot to starters.
Thanks in Advance!!!
You seem to be a little confused about what Grafana does. It is a visualization tool, and is agnostic about the types of data you're visualizing. That is what makes it much more powerful than tools that are more tightly integrated with a particular collector/database.
As long as you can get the data you want to visualize (and in 4.x alert on) into one of the many time-series databases that Grafana supports, you'll be able to visualize that data on Grafana dashboards.
If you want to get an idea of what time-series databases are supported, you can look at the docs for Graphite and the other built-in datasources http://docs.grafana.org/datasources/graphite/ (see the others in the side menu), and find more datasources supported via plugins on https://grafana.net/plugins
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Here is the case, i want to visualize a query result of data taken periodically into dashboard (like grafana or kibana), the problem is I don't know which technology stack to use, should I use ELK stack, Prometheus + Grafana, or using Tableau, the requirements are:
First, it has support for multiple (hundreds) of database server as data source, currently I use Postgresql.
Second, it has support for running one query to all database instance and collect the result into one centralized server to be then displayed on dashboard.
Third, it has support for period/schedule set up (cron-like scheduler) for managing how often data should be queried from all database servers.
Fourth, it has support for alerting/notification system, where i can use existing platform library without much code needed.
Fifth, it has to be opensource project, with good reputation and quite large community support.
Thanks
You can achieve your objective with ELK Stack. In Kibana, you will see basic Dashboard. If you want more detail Dashboard view, then you can integrate Elastic Search with Grafana as well using Lucene query.Below links will help you:
https://www.elastic.co/blog/logstash-jdbc-input-plugin
https://discuss.elastic.co/t/how-can-i-schedule-logstash-every-second-for-jdbc-input-plugin/27393/11
https://grafana.com/blog/2016/03/09/how-to-effectively-use-the-elasticsearch-data-source-in-grafana-and-solutions-to-common-pitfalls/#lucene
The time taken to load the charts(visualization) using tableau in my mobile app is close to 10 or 15 secs. So i am looking for alternative methods like creating my own chart but only to use the intelligence tableau provides on creating the visualizations.
In short, i want to know whether there is some support or API available from tableau using which i can draw the visualizations by myself in my mobile app without losing any chart data or functionality like digging deeper in charts.
For example, an API from tableau using which i can create the chart in my mobile app. After creating it, if user touches any data that should be sent again to tableau to get further event action like showing filters/tables etc.
Is this even possible? I did lot of research in tableau and got to know about tableau SDK, tableau API's, tableau extensions etc. but unable to find what i am looking for.
Tableau provides a thorough white paper Designing Efficient Workbooks. I would start by reading that and trying some of the recommendations.
If you are looking for an API driven visualization system, you can check out MuzeJS.
You load your data in an in-browser DataModel, run relational algebra enabled data operators to get the right subset of data, and then just pass to Muze engine, which automatically renders the best visualization for it.
It is similar to the kind of intelligence Tableau provides but since it is a developer first API, you can customize as you want, whether it be for the mobile or the desktop. In fact, most of the charts will be available for both seamlessly.
Any changes to data (including application of data operations) automatically updates the visualization, without you having to do anything else.
Add to that, if you’ve to connect multiple charts (for cross-interactivity, drill-down etc.), you’ve to manually write the ‘glue’ code. With Muze, all charts rendered from the same DataModel are automatically connected (enabling cross-filtering). It also provides composability and the ability to facet your visualization, providing a multi-grid layout.
You can go through some of the examples and the documentation to see if it suits your needs
I have experienced using Kibana before. However this time, I'd like to try using Grafana. Does my experience guarantee that I can learn Grafana easily? Or is it a whole lot different from Kibana?
Please correct me if I'm wrong but so far, according to my research, both are for logs. Grafana is more of visualization only, while Kibana is for searching the logs; is this right?
Grafana is a fork of Kibana but they have developed in totally different directions since 2013.
1. Logs vs Metrics
Kibana focuses more on logs and adhoc search while Grafana focuses more on creating dashboards for visualizing time series data. This means Grafana is usually used together with Time Series databases like Graphite, InfluxDB or Elasticsearch with aggregations. Kibana is usually used for searching logs.
Metric queries tend to be really fast while searching logs is slower so they are usually used for different purposes. For example, I could look at a metric for memory usage on a server over the last 3 months and get an answer nearly instantly.
Brian Brazil (Prometheus) has written about logs vs metrics.
2. Data Sources
Kibana is for ElasticSearch and the ELK stack. Grafana supports lots of data sources. Even if you are using Grafana with ElasticSearch, you would not usually look at the same data (logs) as in Kibana. It would be data from Logstash or MetricBeat that can be aggregated (grouped by) rather than raw logs.
With Grafana you can mix and match data sources in the same dashboard e.g. ElasticSearch and Splunk.
Conclusion
Kibana and Grafana have some overlap. Kibana has TimeLion for metrics and Grafana has the Table Panel for logs. Lots of companies use both - Kibana for logs and Grafana for visualizing metrics.
They are different from each other so there will be a learning curve.
I need to some visualize data from a Postgresql in Kibana. I have also ElasticSearch installed just in case. So how visualize data from a Postgresql in Kibana? Of course, I don't need the whole database, but only data returned by a custom sql query.
Also, I want it to be as simple as possible, I wouldn't like to use libraries I really don't need to use.
Kibana was built with Elastisearch in mind.
Having used it quite a lot in a startup I worked for, I can tell you that even the front-end query DSL (built on Lucene) will only work with Elasticsearch (or might need some serious tweaks).
I would advise you to push your data into Elasticsearch, and just work with Kibana the way it was made for :)
I have a postgres database with a large number of time series metrics
Various operators are interested in different information and I want to provide an interface where they can chart the data, make comparisons and optionally export data as a csv.
The two solutions I have come across so far are, graphite and grafana, but both these solutions tie you down to storage engines and none support postgres.
What I am looking for is an interface similar to grafana, but which allows me to hook up any backend I want. Are there any tools out there, similar to grafana, which allow you to hook up any backend you want (or even just postgres).
Note that the data I am collecting is highly sensitive, and is required by other areas of the application and so is not suitable for storing in graphite.
The other alternative I see would be to setup a trigger on the postgres DB to feed data into graphite as it arrives, but again, not ideal.
You may want to replace Graphite's storage backend with postgresql. Here is a good primer.
2018 update: Grafana now supports PostgreSQL (link).
What I am looking for is an interface similar to grafana, but which allows me to hook up any backend I want
Thats possible with grafana . Check this guide which shows how to create a datasource plugin for a datasource thats currently not supported.