Documentation Grafana Cloud Developer resources Observability as Code Provision resources and sync dashboards Set up Git Sync

Set up Git Sync

Git Sync lets you manage Grafana dashboards as code by storing dashboard JSON files and folders in a remote GitHub repository.

To set up Git Sync and synchronize with a GitHub repository follow these steps:

1. Enable feature toggles in Grafana (first time set up).
2. Create a GitHub access token.
3. Configure a connection to your GitHub repository.
4. Choose what content to sync with Grafana.

Optionally, you can extend Git Sync by enabling pull request notifications and image previews of dashboard changes.

Performance impacts of enabling Git Sync

Git Sync is an experimental feature and is under continuous development. Reporting any issues you encounter can help us improve Git Sync.

When Git Sync is enabled, the database load might increase, especially for instances with a lot of folders and nested folders. Evaluate the performance impact, if any, in a non-production environment.

Before you begin

To set up Git Sync, you need:

• Administration rights in your Grafana organization.
• Enable the required feature toggles in your Grafana instance. Refer to Enable required feature toggles for instructions.
• A GitHub repository to store your dashboards in.
  • If you want to use a local file path, refer to the local file path guide.
• A GitHub access token. The Grafana UI will prompt you during setup.
• Optional: A public Grafana instance.
• Optional: The Image Renderer service to save image previews with your PRs.

Enable required feature toggles

To activate Git Sync in Grafana, you need to enable the provisioning and kubernetesDashboards feature toggles. For additional information about feature toggles, refer to Configure feature toggles.

To enable the required feature toggles, add them to your Grafana configuration file:

1. Open your Grafana configuration file, either grafana.ini or custom.ini. For file location based on operating system, refer to Configuration file location.

2. Locate or add a [feature_toggles] section. Add these values:

   ini Copy

   [feature_toggles]
   provisioning = true
   kubernetesDashboards = true ; use k8s from browser

3. Save the changes to the file and restart Grafana.

Create a GitHub access token

Whenever you connect to a GitHub repository, you need to create a GitHub access token with specific repository permissions. This token needs to be added to your Git Sync configuration to enable read and write permissions between Grafana and GitHub repository.

1. Create a new token using Create new fine-grained personal access token. Refer to Managing your personal access tokens for instructions.

2. Under Permissions, expand Repository permissions.

3. Set these permissions for Git Sync:

   • Contents: Read and write permission
   • Metadata: Read-only permission
   • Pull requests: Read and write permission
   • Webhooks: Read and write permission

4. Select any additional options and then press Generate token.

5. Verify the options and select Generate token.

6. Copy the access token. Leave the browser window available with the token until you’ve completed configuration.

GitHub Apps are not currently supported.

Set up the connection to GitHub

Use Provisioning to guide you through setting up Git Sync to use a GitHub repository.

1. Log in to your Grafana server with an account that has the Grafana Admin flag set.
2. Select Administration in the left-side menu and then Provisioning.
3. Select Configure Git Sync.

Connect to external storage

To connect your GitHub repository, follow these steps:

1. Paste your GitHub personal access token into Enter your access token. Refer to Create a GitHub access token for instructions.
2. Paste the Repository URL for your GitHub repository into the text box.
3. Enter a branch to use. The default value is main.
4. Add a Path to a subdirectory where your dashboards are stored. The default value is grafana/. If your dashboards are stored in the root of your repository, then remove the directory name.
5. Select Choose what to synchronize to have the connection to your repository verified and continue setup.

Choose what to synchronize

In this step you can decide which elements to synchronize. Keep in mind the available options depend on the status of your GitHub repository. The first time you connect Grafana with a GitHub repository, you need to synchronize with external storage. If you are syncing with a new or empty repository, you won’t have an option to migrate dashboards.

1. Choose to either sync your entire organization resources with external storage, or to sync certain resources to a new Grafana folder (with up to 10 connections).

• Choose Sync all resources with external storage if you want to sync and manage your entire Grafana instance through external storage. With this option, all of your dashboards are synced to that one repository. You can only have one provisioned connection with this selection, and you won’t have the option of setting up additional repositories to connect to.

• Choose Sync external storage to new Grafana folder to sync external resources into a new folder without affecting the rest of your instance. You can repeat this process for up to 10 connections.

1. Enter a Display name for the repository connection. Resources stored in this connection appear under the chosen display name in the Grafana UI.
2. Click Synchronize to continue.

Choose additional settings

Finally, you can set up how often your configured storage is polled for updates.

1. For Update instance interval (seconds), enter how often you want the instance to pull updates from GitHub. The default value is 60 seconds.
2. Optional: Select Read only to ensure resources can’t be modified in Grafana.

1. Optional: If you have the Grafana Image Renderer plugin configured, you can Enable dashboards previews in pull requests. If image rendering is not available, then you can’t select this option. For more information, refer to the Image Renderer service.
2. Select Finish to proceed.

Verify your dashboards in Grafana

To verify that your dashboards are available at the location that you specified, click Dashboards. The name of the dashboard is listed in the Name column.

Now that your dashboards have been synced from a repository, you can customize the name, change the branch, and create a pull request (PR) for it. Refer to Manage provisioned repositories with Git Sync for more information.

Configure webhooks and image rendering

You can extend Git Sync by getting instant updates and pull requests using webhooks and add dashboard previews in pull requests.

Set up webhooks for realtime notification and pull request integration

When connecting to a GitHub repository, Git Sync use webhooks to enable real-time updates from GitHub public repositories or enable the pull request integration. Without webhooks, the polling interval is set in the final configuration screen (default is 60 seconds). Your Grafana instance must be exposed to the public internet. You can do this via port forwarding and DNS, a tool such as ngrok, or any other method you prefer.

The permissions set in your GitHub access token provide the authorization for this communication.

If you use local storage, then Git Sync only provides periodic pulling.

Set up webhooks with whichever service or tooling you prefer. For example, you can use Cloudflare Tunnels with a Cloudflare-managed domain, port-forwarding and DNS options, or a tool such as ngrok.

After you have the public URL, you can add it to your Grafana configuration file:

YAML Copy

[server]
root_url = https://PUBLIC_DOMAIN.HERE

You can check the configured webhooks in the View link for your GitHub repository from Administration > Provisioning.

Necessary paths

If your security setup does not permit publicly exposing the Grafana instance, you can either choose to allowlist the GitHub IP addresses, or expose only the necessary paths.

The necessary paths required to be exposed are (RegExp):

• /apis/provisioning\.grafana\.app/v0(alpha1)?/namespaces/[^/]+/repositories/[^/]+/(webhook|render/.*)$

Set up image rendering for dashboard previews

By setting up image rendering, you can add visual previews of dashboard updates directly in pull requests. Image rendering also requires webhooks.

You can enable this capability by installing the Grafana Image Renderer in your Grafana instance. For more information and installation instructions, refer to the Image Renderer service.

Modify configurations after set up is complete

To update your repository configuration after you’ve completed set up:

1. Log in to your Grafana server with an account that has the Grafana Admin flag set.
2. Select Administration in the left-side menu and then Provisioning.
3. Select Settings for the repository you wish to modify.
4. Use the Configure repository screen to update any of the settings.
5. Select Save to preserve the updates.