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Aiven for Grafana is a fully managed analytics and monitoring solution that brings unlimited scalability and high availability to your observability stack. Create powerful dashboards and visualizations for metrics, logs, and time-series data from multiple sources.

Overview

Grafana is the leading open-source platform for monitoring and observability. Aiven for Grafana provides a production-ready service with seamless integration to Aiven’s data infrastructure, pre-built dashboards, and over 60 advanced plugins.

Why Choose Aiven for Grafana

Unified Observability

Visualize metrics, logs, and traces from multiple data sources in one platform

Pre-Built Dashboards

Monitor Aiven services with ready-made dashboards out of the box

60+ Plugins

Access advanced visualization and data source plugins for customization

Quick Deployment

Production-ready Grafana clusters available in 10 minutes

Key Features

Connect to various data sources:
  • Aiven Services: PostgreSQL, MySQL, OpenSearch, ClickHouse, Metrics (Prometheus)
  • Time-Series: Prometheus, InfluxDB, Graphite
  • Logs: Loki, OpenSearch, Elasticsearch
  • Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MSSQL
  • Cloud: CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Google Cloud Monitoring
  • Tracing: Jaeger, Tempo, Zipkin
Create custom dashboards:
  • Drag-and-drop panel editor
  • Multiple visualization types
  • Template variables
  • Dashboard playlists
  • Snapshot sharing
  • Version control
  • Dashboard folders
Rich visualization library:
  • Time-series graphs
  • Bar charts and histograms
  • Heatmaps
  • Stat panels and gauges
  • Tables and logs
  • Geo maps
  • Node graphs
  • Canvas (custom visualizations)
Proactive monitoring:
  • Multi-dimensional alerting
  • Multiple notification channels
  • Alert rules and folders
  • Silences and mute timings
  • Alert history
  • Notification policies
Team collaboration:
  • Role-based access control
  • Teams and organizations
  • Dashboard permissions
  • Anonymous access
  • SSO integration

Getting Started

1

Create Grafana Service

Deploy a Grafana service:
avn service create my-grafana \
  --service-type grafana \
  --cloud aws-us-east-1 \
  --plan startup-4
2

Access Grafana UI

Get the Grafana URL and credentials:
avn service get my-grafana --format '{service_uri}'
Login with username avnadmin and the password from service credentials.
3

Add Data Sources

Integrate Aiven services automatically:
# Connect to Aiven for Metrics (Prometheus)
avn service integration-create \
  --integration-type metrics \
  --source-service my-kafka \
  --dest-service my-grafana

# Connect to PostgreSQL
avn service integration-create \
  --integration-type grafana \
  --source-service my-postgresql \
  --dest-service my-grafana
4

Create Your First Dashboard

  1. Click + → Dashboard
  2. Add visualization
  3. Select data source
  4. Configure query
  5. Customize visualization
  6. Save dashboard

Dashboard Examples

Monitor Aiven service health:
-- Kafka throughput
SELECT
  $__timeGroupAlias(time, $__interval),
  sum(messages_in_per_sec) AS "Messages In/Sec"
FROM kafka_metrics
WHERE $__timeFilter(time)
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1

-- PostgreSQL connections
SELECT
  time,
  active_connections,
  idle_connections,
  total_connections
FROM pg_metrics
WHERE $__timeFilter(time)

-- OpenSearch query rate
rate(opensearch_search_total[5m])

Dashboard Best Practices

  • Use consistent color schemes
  • Group related panels
  • Add panel descriptions
  • Use template variables for flexibility
  • Keep dashboards focused on specific areas
  • Name dashboards descriptively
  • Use time ranges appropriately
  • Limit data points with $__interval
  • Cache queries when possible
  • Use query variables
  • Avoid wildcard queries
  • Pre-aggregate data when needed
  • Set meaningful thresholds
  • Avoid alert fatigue
  • Use alert labels
  • Configure notification channels
  • Test alerts before deploying
  • Document alert meanings

Advanced Features

Template Variables

-- Define variable query
SELECT DISTINCT service_name FROM metrics

-- Use in queries
SELECT
  time,
  value
FROM metrics
WHERE service_name = '$service'
  AND $__timeFilter(time)
Create dropdowns to filter dashboards by:
  • Service name
  • Environment
  • Region
  • Time range

Alerting

  1. Create Alert Rule:
    • Define query and condition
    • Set evaluation interval
    • Configure thresholds
  2. Configure Notification Channels:
    • Email
    • Slack
    • PagerDuty
    • Webhook
    • Microsoft Teams
  3. Example Alert:
    Alert: High CPU Usage
    Condition: avg(cpu_usage) > 80
    For: 5m
    Labels:
      severity: warning
      team: infrastructure
    Annotations:
      summary: "CPU usage above 80% for 5 minutes"
    

Dashboard Sharing

  • Snapshot: Create point-in-time dashboard view
  • Link: Share dashboard URL
  • Export: Download dashboard JSON
  • Embed: Iframe embedding
  • PDF: Scheduled PDF reports
  • Playlist: Auto-rotating dashboards

Pre-Built Dashboards

Aiven provides ready-to-use dashboards for monitoring Aiven services:

Kafka Monitoring

  • Broker metrics
  • Topic throughput
  • Consumer lag
  • Partition distribution

PostgreSQL Monitoring

  • Connection stats
  • Query performance
  • Replication lag
  • Table sizes

OpenSearch Monitoring

  • Cluster health
  • Query rate
  • Indexing rate
  • Shard allocation

ClickHouse Monitoring

  • Query performance
  • Insert rate
  • Memory usage
  • Table metrics

Use Cases

  • Server metrics (CPU, memory, disk)
  • Network monitoring
  • Container metrics (Docker, Kubernetes)
  • Cloud resource monitoring
  • Database performance

Integration with Aiven Services

# PostgreSQL data source
avn service integration-create \
  --integration-type grafana \
  --source-service my-postgresql \
  --dest-service my-grafana

# Metrics (Prometheus)
avn service integration-create \
  --integration-type metrics \
  --source-service my-kafka \
  --dest-service my-grafana

# OpenSearch for logs
avn service integration-create \
  --integration-type grafana \
  --source-service my-opensearch \
  --dest-service my-grafana

Performance Tips

  • Use appropriate time ranges
  • Limit data points
  • Cache dashboard queries
  • Use query variables
  • Pre-aggregate when possible
  • Limit panels per dashboard
  • Use shared queries
  • Set appropriate refresh intervals
  • Hide panels when not needed
  • Use dashboard folders

Metrics (Thanos)

Prometheus-compatible metrics storage

OpenSearch

Log aggregation and search

PostgreSQL

Visualize database metrics

ClickHouse

Analytics dashboard data source

Resources

Pre-Built Dashboards: Aiven provides pre-configured dashboards for monitoring all Aiven services. These are automatically available when you create service integrations.

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