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Grafana: User Guide

For those using Grafana on a pre-configured server for the first time. This guide explains how to work with organizations, find and view dashboards, understand the interface, and read metrics.

📌 Introduction: What is Grafana?

Grafana is a web application for visualizing and monitoring data from various sources. It allows you to create interactive dashboards that show:

  • system performance,
  • server resource usage,
  • application behavior,
  • logs and alerts.

💡 Grafana is the interface used to view data collected by Prometheus, Loki, Zabbix, and other systems.

🔐 1. Logging in to Grafana

  1. Open your browser and go to:

https://qcmon-qcint.quintessence.de/grafana/

  1. Enter your credentials:

    • Username and password provided by IT/DevOps
    • Or use the SSO login button (e.g., "Login with Keycloak")

💡 If you don’t know your credentials, contact IT or DevOps.

After logging in, you'll land on the Grafana home page, which typically displays:

  • Starred dashboards
  • Recently viewed dashboards
  • Important links (settings, documentation, etc.)

🏢 2. Organizations in Grafana

Grafana supports multiple organizations. These are logical zones where each can have its own:

  • dashboards,
  • users,
  • data sources.

How to check your current organization

  1. Click on your profile icon in the lower-left corner
  2. The menu will show the current organization name
  3. If you have access to multiple orgs — you'll see a Switch Organization button

CleanShot 2025-05-28 at 15.58.31.gif

When this matters:

  • You can't see the required dashboard — it may belong to another org
  • Error "Dashboard not found" — check your current org
  • You work in multiple projects or environments — each may have its own organization

🧭 3. Grafana Interface: Layout & Navigation

Side Menu:

Icon Section Description
📊 Dashboards Browse and search dashboards
🧭 Explore Real-time query exploration
🔔 Alerting View active alerts
⚙️ Configuration Data sources, settings (admin only)
👤 Profile Theme, language, org switch

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Top Bar:

  • Time range selection (e.g., last 1h, last 7d)
  • Auto-refresh interval
  • Dashboard and panel search
  • Edit and Save buttons (if permissions allow)

💡 If you don’t see buttons or menus, you probably don’t have edit permissions.

img_1.png

📋 4. Dashboards

A dashboard is a collection of panels grouped around a specific topic.

How to open a dashboard:

  1. Menu → Dashboards → Browse
  2. Use the search box or navigate folders on the left
  3. Click the dashboard name to open it

Useful actions:

  • ⭐ Click the star icon to add to your favorites
  • 🖉 Use the "Edit" button if you have permissions
  • 💾 "Save As" lets you save a copy of the dashboard (for experiments, testing)

img_2.png

📈 5. Panels

Each panel is a visualization of a data query.

img_3.png

Type Purpose
Graph Time series line chart
Stat Single value display (e.g., CPU usage)
Table Structured tabular data
Gauge Circular meter indicator
Bar Gauge Horizontal bar indicator

img_4.png

What you can do with a panel:

  • Hover to view tooltips with details
  • Click Inspect → to view the query and results
  • Click Download CSV → to save the panel data

Example queries:

Prometheus:

rate(http_requests_total{job="nginx"}[5m])

Loki:

{job="app", level="error"} |= "Exception"

📘 Recommendations for First-Time Users

  • Use reasonable time ranges (e.g., 1h, 6h). Avoid 30d+ unless needed — it may slow down the system
  • If a panel doesn’t load — try reducing the time range
  • If you see errors, click Inspect → Query to see the response from the data source
  • Always use "Save As" if you want to change a dashboard
  • Contact DevOps if you’re missing variables, dashboards, or if something looks broken

Changelog

Date Author Message
2026-02-25 aresnikowa Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master'