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Git Sync for development and production environments

Use separate Grafana instances for development and production. Each syncs with different Git locations to test dashboards before production.

Use it for

• Staged deployments: You need to test dashboard changes before production deployment.
• Change control: You require approvals before dashboards reach production.
• Quality assurance: You verify dashboard functionality in a non-production environment.
• Risk mitigation: You minimize the risk of breaking production dashboards.

Architecture

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┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              GitHub Repository                             │
│   Repository: your-org/grafana-manifests                 │
│   Branch: main                                             │
│                                                            │
│   grafana-manifests/                                     │
│   ├── dev/                                                │
│   │   ├── dashboard-new.json    ← Development dashboards │
│   │   └── dashboard-test.json                            │
│   │                                                       │
│   └── prod/                                               │
│       ├── dashboard-stable.json  ← Production dashboards │
│       └── dashboard-approved.json                        │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
           ↕                                 ↕
    Git Sync (dev/)              Git Sync (prod/)
           ↕                                 ↕
┌─────────────────────┐          ┌─────────────────────┐
│  Dev Grafana        │          │  Prod Grafana       │
│                     │          │                     │
│  Repository:        │          │  Repository:        │
│  - path: dev/       │          │  - path: prod/      │
│                     │          │                     │
│  Creates folder:    │          │  Creates folder:    │
│  "grafana-manifests"│         │  "grafana-manifests"│
└─────────────────────┘          └─────────────────────┘

Repository structure

In Git:

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your-org/grafana-manifests
├── dev/
│   ├── dashboard-new.json
│   └── dashboard-test.json
└── prod/
    ├── dashboard-stable.json
    └── dashboard-approved.json

In Grafana Dashboards view:

Dev instance:

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Dashboards
└── 📁 grafana-manifests/
    ├── New Dashboard
    └── Test Dashboard

Prod instance:

Copy

Dashboards
└── 📁 grafana-manifests/
    ├── Stable Dashboard
    └── Approved Dashboard

• Both instances create a folder named “grafana-manifests” (from repository name)
• Each instance only shows dashboards from its configured path (dev/ or prod/)
• Dashboards appear with their titles from the JSON files

Configuration parameters

Development:

• Repository: your-org/grafana-manifests
• Branch: main
• Path: dev/

Production:

• Repository: your-org/grafana-manifests
• Branch: main
• Path: prod/

How it works

1. Developers create and modify dashboards in development.
2. Git Sync commits changes to dev/.
3. You review changes in Git.
4. You promote approved dashboards from dev/ to prod/.
5. Production syncs from prod/.
6. Production dashboards update.

Alternative: Use branches

Instead of using different paths, you can configure instances to use different branches:

Development instance:

• Repository: your-org/grafana-manifests
• Branch: develop
• Path: grafana/

Production instance:

• Repository: your-org/grafana-manifests
• Branch: main
• Path: grafana/

With this approach:

• Development changes go to the develop branch
• Use Git merge or pull request workflows to promote changes from develop to main
• Production automatically syncs from the main branch

Alternative: Use separate repositories for stricter isolation

For stricter isolation, use completely separate repositories:

Development instance:

• Repository: your-org/grafana-manifests-dev
• Branch: main
• Path: grafana/

Production instance:

• Repository: your-org/grafana-manifests-prod
• Branch: main
• Path: grafana/