⚠️ DEPRECATED

This chart was moved to https://github.com/grafana/helm2-grafana

Grafana Helm Chart

• Installs the web dashboarding system Grafana

TL;DR;

$ helm install stable/grafana

Installing the Chart

To install the chart with the release name my-release:

$ helm install --name my-release stable/grafana

Uninstalling the Chart

To uninstall/delete the my-release deployment:

$ helm delete my-release

The command removes all the Kubernetes components associated with the chart and deletes the release.

Upgrading an existing Release to a new major version

A major chart version change (like v1.2.3 -> v2.0.0) indicates that there is an incompatible breaking change needing manual actions.

To 4.0.0 (And 3.12.1)

This version requires Helm >= 2.12.0.

To 5.0.0

You have to add --force to your helm upgrade command as the labels of the chart have changed.

Configuration

Example ingress with path

With grafana 6.3 and above

grafana.ini:
  server:
    domain: monitoring.example.com
    root_url: "%(protocol)s://%(domain)s/grafana"
    serve_from_sub_path: true
ingress:
  enabled: true
  hosts:
    - "monitoring.example.com"
  path: "/grafana"

Example of extraVolumeMounts

- extraVolumeMounts:
  - name: plugins
    mountPath: /var/lib/grafana/plugins
    subPath: configs/grafana/plugins
    existingClaim: existing-grafana-claim
    readOnly: false

Import dashboards

There are a few methods to import dashboards to Grafana. Below are some examples and explanations as to how to use each method:

dashboards:
  default:
    some-dashboard:
      json: |
        {
          "annotations":

          ...
          # Complete json file here
          ...

          "title": "Some Dashboard",
          "uid": "abcd1234",
          "version": 1
        }
    custom-dashboard:
      # This is a path to a file inside the dashboards directory inside the chart directory
      file: dashboards/custom-dashboard.json
    prometheus-stats:
      # Ref: https://grafana.com/dashboards/2
      gnetId: 2
      revision: 2
      datasource: Prometheus
    local-dashboard:
      url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/user/repository/master/dashboards/dashboard.json

BASE64 dashboards

Dashboards could be storaged in a server that does not return JSON directly and instead of it returns a Base64 encoded file (e.g. Gerrit) A new parameter has been added to the url use case so if you specify a b64content value equals to true after the url entry a Base64 decoding is applied before save the file to disk. If this entry is not set or is equals to false not decoding is applied to the file before saving it to disk.

Gerrit use case:

Gerrit API for download files has the following schema: https://yourgerritserver/a/{project-name}/branches/{branch-id}/files/{file-id}/content where {project-name} and {file-id} usualy has '/' in their values and so they MUST be replaced by %2F so if project-name is user/repo, branch-id is master and file-id is equals to dir1/dir2/dashboard the url value is https://yourgerritserver/a/user%2Frepo/branches/master/files/dir1%2Fdir2%2Fdashboard/content

Sidecar for dashboards

If the parameter sidecar.dashboards.enabled is set, a sidecar container is deployed in the grafana pod. This container watches all configmaps (or secrets) in the cluster and filters out the ones with a label as defined in sidecar.dashboards.label. The files defined in those configmaps are written to a folder and accessed by grafana. Changes to the configmaps are monitored and the imported dashboards are deleted/updated.

A recommendation is to use one configmap per dashboard, as a reduction of multiple dashboards inside one configmap is currently not properly mirrored in grafana.

Example dashboard config:

apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: sample-grafana-dashboard
  labels:
     grafana_dashboard: "1"
data:
  k8s-dashboard.json: |-
  [...]

Sidecar for datasources

If the parameter sidecar.datasources.enabled is set, an init container is deployed in the grafana pod. This container lists all secrets (or configmaps, though not recommended) in the cluster and filters out the ones with a label as defined in sidecar.datasources.label. The files defined in those secrets are written to a folder and accessed by grafana on startup. Using these yaml files, the data sources in grafana can be imported. The secrets must be created before helm install so that the datasources init container can list the secrets.

Secrets are recommended over configmaps for this usecase because datasources usually contain private data like usernames and passwords. Secrets are the more appropriate cluster ressource to manage those.

Example datasource config adapted from Grafana:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: sample-grafana-datasource
  labels:
     grafana_datasource: "1"
type: Opaque
stringData:
  datasource.yaml: |-
    # config file version
    apiVersion: 1

    # list of datasources that should be deleted from the database
    deleteDatasources:
      - name: Graphite
        orgId: 1

    # list of datasources to insert/update depending
    # whats available in the database
    datasources:
      # <string, required> name of the datasource. Required
    - name: Graphite
      # <string, required> datasource type. Required
      type: graphite
      # <string, required> access mode. proxy or direct (Server or Browser in the UI). Required
      access: proxy
      # <int> org id. will default to orgId 1 if not specified
      orgId: 1
      # <string> url
      url: http://localhost:8080
      # <string> database password, if used
      password:
      # <string> database user, if used
      user:
      # <string> database name, if used
      database:
      # <bool> enable/disable basic auth
      basicAuth:
      # <string> basic auth username
      basicAuthUser:
      # <string> basic auth password
      basicAuthPassword:
      # <bool> enable/disable with credentials headers
      withCredentials:
      # <bool> mark as default datasource. Max one per org
      isDefault:
      # <map> fields that will be converted to json and stored in json_data
      jsonData:
         graphiteVersion: "1.1"
         tlsAuth: true
         tlsAuthWithCACert: true
      # <string> json object of data that will be encrypted.
      secureJsonData:
        tlsCACert: "..."
        tlsClientCert: "..."
        tlsClientKey: "..."
      version: 1
      # <bool> allow users to edit datasources from the UI.
      editable: false

Sidecar for notifiers

If the parameter sidecar.notifiers.enabled is set, an init container is deployed in the grafana pod. This container lists all secrets (or configmaps, though not recommended) in the cluster and filters out the ones with a label as defined in sidecar.notifiers.label. The files defined in those secrets are written to a folder and accessed by grafana on startup. Using these yaml files, the notification channels in grafana can be imported. The secrets must be created before helm install so that the notifiers init container can list the secrets.

Secrets are recommended over configmaps for this usecase because alert notification channels usually contain private data like SMTP usernames and passwords. Secrets are the more appropriate cluster ressource to manage those.

Example datasource config adapted from Grafana:

notifiers:
  - name: notification-channel-1
    type: slack
    uid: notifier1
    # either
    org_id: 2
    # or
    org_name: Main Org.
    is_default: true
    send_reminder: true
    frequency: 1h
    disable_resolve_message: false
    # See `Supported Settings` section for settings supporter for each
    # alert notification type.
    settings:
      recipient: 'XXX'
      token: 'xoxb'
      uploadImage: true
      url: https://slack.com

delete_notifiers:
  - name: notification-channel-1
    uid: notifier1
    org_id: 2
  - name: notification-channel-2
    # default org_id: 1

How to serve Grafana with a path prefix (/grafana)

In order to serve Grafana with a prefix (e.g., http://example.com/grafana), add the following to your values.yaml.

ingress:
  enabled: true
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: "nginx"
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/rewrite-target: /$1
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/use-regex: "true"

  path: /grafana/?(.*)
  hosts:
    - k8s.example.dev

grafana.ini:
  server:
    root_url: http://localhost:3000/grafana # this host can be localhost