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Grafana Dashboards

docs/content/en/guides/telemetry/grafana-dashboards.md

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The Telemetry → Charts view lets you find your existing Grafana dashboards and render their panels directly inside Meshery, using data proxied securely through the Meshery server. Nothing is re-built or re-modeled — Meshery reads the same dashboards you have in Grafana and draws their panels natively.

Prerequisites

  • A registered Grafana [Connection]({{< ref "concepts/logical/connections/index.md" >}}) in the Connected or Registered state, with a [Credential]({{< ref "concepts/logical/credentials.md" >}}) holding a Grafana API key or service-account token. See [Telemetry prerequisites]({{< ref "guides/telemetry/_index.md" >}}).

Open the Charts view

  1. In the Meshery navigation, expand Telemetry and select Charts.
  2. Use the connection picker to choose the Grafana connection you want to view.
  3. Check the connection status indicator — it pings Grafana and reports whether it is reachable, along with the detected Grafana version. Clicking a Grafana connection's status chip on the [Connections]({{< ref "concepts/logical/connections/index.md" >}}) page also pings it and raises a notification with the result.

Browse and pin dashboards

  1. Open the dashboard library (the board browser) and search for a dashboard by name.
  2. Select a dashboard to render it. Meshery loads the dashboard definition, resolves its template variables and datasources, and draws each panel.
  3. Use Add (pin) to keep a dashboard handy. Pinned dashboards appear in your Charts view every time you return.
  4. Use Remove (unpin) to take a dashboard out of the pinned list.

Pinned dashboards are stored on the Grafana connection itself, so they persist and are available wherever that connection is used.

Render and read panels

  • Panels are laid out following the dashboard's own grid, and rendered as native time-series charts (and single-stat values) inside Meshery.
  • A shared time range picker (last 5 minutes up to last 7 days) applies to every panel; use Refresh to reload on demand or set an auto-refresh interval.
  • Template variables (for example $datasource, $job, $instance) and Grafana time macros (such as $__rate_interval) are resolved automatically before each query is sent, so dashboards that rely on variables render correctly.
  • If a single panel's query fails, the error is shown inline on that panel only — the rest of the dashboard keeps rendering.

{{% alert title="Rendering model" color="info" %}} Meshery renders panels by querying Grafana's datasource proxy server-side and drawing the results itself. It does not embed Grafana's own UI, so you do not need browser-side access to Grafana — only the Meshery server needs to reach it. {{% /alert %}}

  • [Prometheus Metrics]({{< ref "guides/telemetry/prometheus-metrics.md" >}}) — for exploring raw Prometheus metrics and saving your own PromQL panels.
  • [Registering a Connection]({{< ref "guides/infrastructure-management/registering-a-connection.md" >}})