Day 17: Visualizing Data with Grafana

Welcome to Day 17 of the Zero to Platform Engineer in 30 Days challenge! 🚀 Today, we’re focusing on visualizing Kubernetes metrics with Grafana, creating real-time dashboards to monitor application performance.

Why Use Grafana ?

Grafana is an open-source observability platform that helps you:

• Visualize metrics from Prometheus, Loki, and other data sources.
• Create dynamic dashboards for monitoring infrastructure and applications.
• Set up alerts to detect performance issues in real-time.

🎯 Key Benefits:

• Supports multiple data sources (Prometheus, Loki, InfluxDB, etc.).
• Interactive dashboards for real-time monitoring.
• Configurable alerts for proactive issue resolution.

Hands-On: Setting Up Grafana for Kubernetes

Step 1: Install Grafana with Helm

1. Add the Grafana Helm repository:

helm repo add grafana https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update

2. Install Grafana in your Kubernetes cluster:

helm install grafana grafana/grafana --namespace monitoring --create-namespace

3. Verify that Grafana is running:

kubectl get pods -n monitoring

Step 2: Access Grafana

1. Forward Grafana to your local machine:

kubectl port-forward svc/grafana -n monitoring 3000:80

2. Open Grafana in your browser:

👉 http://localhost:3000

3. Retrieve the admin password:

kubectl get secret grafana -n monitoring -o jsonpath="{.data.admin-password}" | base64 -d

4. Login:

• Username: admin
• Password: Retrieved from the previous command.

Step 3: Connect Prometheus as a Data Source

1. In the Grafana UI, go to Configuration > Data Sources.
2. Click Add data source and select Prometheus.
3. Enter the Prometheus URL:

http://prometheus-kube-prometheus-prometheus.monitoring.svc.cluster.local:9090

4. Click Save & Test to confirm the connection.

Step 4: Import a Pre-Built Kubernetes Dashboard

1. Go to Dashboards > Import.
2. Enter Dashboard ID: 3119 (Kubernetes Cluster Monitoring).
3. Select Prometheus as the data source.
4. Click Import to visualize your cluster metrics.

Step 5: Create a Custom Dashboard

1. Go to Create > Dashboard.
2. Add a Graph Panel and use the following PromQL queries:

• CPU Usage:

sum(rate(container_cpu_usage_seconds_total[5m])) by (pod)

• Memory Usage:

sum(container_memory_usage_bytes) by (pod)

• Request Rates:

rate(http_requests_total[1m])

3. Click Save to store your custom dashboard.

Step 6: Set Up Alerts in Grafana

1. Navigate to Alerting > Contact Points and add Slack, Email, or PagerDuty.
2. Create a new Alert Rule:
   1. Condition: CPU usage > 85% for 2 minutes.
   2. Notification: Send to configured contact points.
3. Click Save to activate alerts.

Activity for Today

1. Deploy Grafana and connect it to Prometheus.
2. Import a pre-built Kubernetes dashboard.
3. Create a custom dashboard with key performance metrics.
4. Set up alerts for proactive monitoring.

What’s Next?

Tomorrow, we’ll explore distributed tracing with OpenTelemetry, gaining deeper insights into request flows across microservices.

👉 Check it out here: Zero to Platform Engineer Repository

Feel free to clone the repo, experiment with the code, and even contribute if you’d like! 🚀

Follow the Series!

🎉 Don’t miss a single step in your journey to becoming a Platform Engineer! 🎉

This post is just the beginning. Here’s what we’ve covered so far and what’s coming up next:

• Day 0: Introduction - What’s Platform Engineering?

• Day 1: Introduction to the CNCF Landscape

• Day 2: Day 2: Containers and Docker - The Building Blocks of Cloud Native

• Day 3: Containers and Kubernetes - The Building Blocks of Cloud Native

• Day 4: Deployments and Scaling in Kubernetes - Let’s Get Practical

• Day 5: Kubernetes Services – Connecting Your Applications

• Day 6: ConfigMaps and Secrets – Managing Configurations in Kubernetes

• Day 7: Recap and Hands-On Challenges for Week 1

• Day 8: Introduction to Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

• Day 9: Advanced Terraform – Managing Kubernetes Resources

• Day 10: Managing Kubernetes with Helm and Terraform

• Day 11: Introduction to GitOps with ArgoCD

• Day 12: Advanced GitOps with Argo Rollouts

👉 Bookmark this blog and check back every day for new posts in the series. 📣 Share your progress on social media with the hashtag #ZeroToPlatformEngineer to connect with other readers!