Guides - Deploying Grafana through the Linode Marketplace

Grafana is an open source analytics and monitoring solution with a focus on accessibility for metric visualization. You can use Grafana to create, monitor, store, and share metrics with your team to keep tabs on your infrastructure. Grafana is very lightweight and does not use a lot of memory and CPU resources.

Note

Grafana is often used alongside Prometheus for monitoring and data collection. Consider using the combined Prometheus and Grafana Marketplace App if you intend on using both of these applications together.

The Linode Marketplace allows you to easily deploy software on a Compute Instance using the Cloud Manager. See Get Started with Marketplace Apps for complete steps.

1. Log in to the Cloud Manager and select the Marketplace link from the left navigation menu. This displays the Linode Create page with the Marketplace tab pre-selected.

2. Under the Select App section, select the app you would like to deploy.

3. Complete the form by following the steps and advice within the Creating a Compute Instance guide. Depending on the Marketplace App you selected, there may be additional configuration options available. See the Configuration Options section below for compatible distributions, recommended plans, and any additional configuration options available for this Marketplace App.

4. Click the Create Linode button. Once the Compute Instance has been provisioned and has fully powered on, wait for the software installation to complete. If the instance is powered off or restarted before this time, the software installation will likely fail.

To verify that the app has been fully installed, see Get Started with Marketplace Apps > Verify Installation. Once installed, follow the instructions within the Getting Started After Deployment section to access the application and start using it.

Note

Estimated deployment time: Grafana should be fully installed within 2-5 minutes after the Compute Instance has finished provisioning.

• Supported distributions: Debian 11
• Recommended minimum plan: All plan types and sizes can be used.

• Grafana Password (required): Set your Grafana instance’s admin password. You will use this password when first logging into Grafana.

You can optionally fill out the following fields to automatically create a limited user for your new Compute Instance. This is recommended for most deployments as an additional security measure. This account will be assigned to the sudo group, which provides elevated permission when running commands with the sudo prefix.

• Limited sudo user: Enter your preferred username for the limited user.
• Password for the limited user: Enter a strong password for the new user.
• SSH public key for the limited user: If you wish to login as the limited user through public key authentication (without entering a password), enter your public key here. See Creating an SSH Key Pair and Configuring Public Key Authentication on a Server for instructions on generating a key pair.
• Disable root access over SSH: To block the root user from logging in over SSH, select Yes (recommended). You can still switch to the root user once logged in and you can also log in as root through Lish.

Now that your Grafana Marketplace App is deployed, you can log into Grafana to access all of its monitoring and visualization features.

1. Open a browser and navigate to your Linode’s IP address and port 3000, for example, http://192.0.2.0:3000/. By default, Grafana will listen to port 3000.

   Note

   The Grafana Marketplace App will install and enable the UFW firewall allowing TCP traffic on port 3000.

2. Viewing Grafana’s log in page, enter in admin as the username and the Grafana password you set in the Grafana Options section of the Cloud Manager, as the password. Click on the Log In button.

3. Once you are logged into Grafana, complete your configurations by adding a data source, creating dashboards, and adding users.

Note

Currently, Linode does not manage software and systems updates for Marketplace Apps. It is up to the user to perform routine maintenance on software deployed in this fashion.

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

• Create Grafana API tokens and dashboards for an organization
• Grafana Alerting and Engine Rules