How to install and configure Grafana on CentOS 7

Grafana is an open-source metric analytics and visualization software. It is a feature-rich metrics dashboard suite that is used widely as a graph editor for Graphite, Elasticsearch, OpenTSDB, Prometheus, and InfluxDB.

Typical Grafana usage includes infrastructure and application analytics, but it’s also applied in other domains including industrial sensors, home automation, weather, and process control.

Installing and Configuring Grafana on CentOS 7

Launch Terminal and login as root.

Step 1 – Disable SELinux

The first step is to check the SELinux status and disable it if it is enabled.

getenforce

Modify SELinux configurations as follows:

vim /etc/sysconfig/selinux

Change SELINUX=enforcing to SELINUX=disabled

Reboot system.

reboot

There are few methods to install Grafana on RPM-based Linux Distributions like Centos /Fedora. In today’s tutorial, we are going to install from Grafana repository.

Step 2 – Installing Grafana via YUM Repository

Create a repo file.

vim /etc/yum.repos.d/grafana.repo

Add the following contents to file:

[grafana]
name=grafana
baseurl=https://packages.grafana.com/oss/rpm
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.grafana.com/gpg.key
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

Step 3 – Install Grafana

Enter the following command:

sudo yum install grafana

Install Grafana

Completed Installation

The Package does the following things:

• Installs binary to /usr/sbin/grafana-server
• Copies init.d script to /etc/init.d/grafana-server
• Installs default file to /etc/sysconfig/grafana-server
• Copies configuration file to /etc/grafana/grafana.ini
• Installs systemd service (if systemd is available) name grafana-server.service
• The default configuration uses a log file at /var/log/grafana/grafana.log

Step 4 – Install additional font packages

Continue with following commands to install the free type and urw fonts.

yum install fontconfig

yum install freetype*

yum install urw-fonts

Step 5 – Enable Grafana Service

Check the status of the service.

systemctl status grafana-server

If service is not active, start it using the following command:

systemctl start grafana-server

Enable Grafana service on system boot

systemctl enable grafana-server.service

Step 6 – Modify Firewall

Change firewall configuration to allow Grafana port. So run following command.

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=3000/tcp --permanent

Reload firewall service.

firewall-cmd --reload

Step 7 – Browse Grafana

Use the following URL to access the Grafana web interface.

http://Your Server IP or Host Name:3000/

Grafana Login Page

Enter “admin” in the login and password fields for first-time use; then it should ask you to change the password.

Change Password

It should redirect to the Dashboard.

Grafana Dashboard

In the previous article, we learned how to install Zabbix. So here we are going to add Zabbix Plugin to Grafana.

Step 8 – Install Plugins

To Install Zabbix plugin run following command:

grafana-cli plugins install alexanderzobnin-zabbix-app

Default plugin installation directory is /var/lib/grafana/plugins. Restart Grafana Service.

systemctl restart grafana-server

Refresh Grafana Dashboard to see Zabbix plugin. Click “Enable Now.”

Zabbix Plugin

The dashboard should show that the Zabbix plugin is up to date.

Step 9 – Configure Zabbix Plugin

Click on “Add data Source.”

Click Add Data Source from DashBoard

You should see various kind of data sources. Select Zabbix from it.

Select Zabbix DataSource

Next, you should see the configuration page.

Add Zabbix Server Details

Under HTTP modify URL, add Zabbix Server User Name and Password under Zabbix API details:

http://Your-Zabbix-ServerIP/zabbix/api_jsonrpc.php

Enable Trends. Click Save and Test.

Save and Test DataSource

Go home clicking Dashboards -> Home.

Grafana Home

Step 10 – Create a Dashboard

Click on “New dashboard ” to create.

Home-Dashboard

Click on “Add Query”.

New-Dashboard

You should see the Query window.

Add Query

Select Queries to “Zabbix”. Set Query Mode to “Metrics”.

Select “Group”, “Host”, “Application”, “Item” from drop-down menu. (These data comes from Zabbix server).

Completed Query Window

Click on Visualization to configure Graph. Select Visualization type from the drop-down menu.

Visualization

Then click general and add a title to the dashboard.

Add Name to Panel

Finally, you can save the Dashboard and give any name.

Save Dashboard

You can view your newly created Graph!

Newly Created Graph

Congratulations, you have successfully installed and configured Grafana with visualization. There are loads of plugins further to explore, and with Grafana able to support various kind of data sources, it’s up to you on how you want to configure those data sources and plugins to suit your needs.