--- title: "Generate a data source diagnostic bundle to send to Grafana Labs support | Grafana documentation" description: "Learn how to generate a data source diagnostic bundle and send it to Grafana Labs support for troubleshooting" --- > For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt). # Generate a data source diagnostic bundle > Note > > On-demand data source diagnostics is an [experimental](/docs/release-life-cycle/#experimental) feature that helps you share troubleshooting evidence with Grafana Labs Technical Support. The feature is disabled by default. To switch it on, refer to [Enable the feature toggle](#enable-the-feature-toggle). When a panel returns an error, no data, or data that looks wrong, Grafana Labs Technical Support needs to know what your data source actually returned. In Grafana Cloud, you can grant support access to your stack so an engineer can investigate live. A self-managed instance isn’t reachable by support, so you collect the evidence yourself in a diagnostic bundle and send it in. When you generate a diagnostic bundle, Grafana re-runs the panel’s queries with traffic capture active and packages the result as a single `.tar.gz` file containing the requests and responses exchanged with your data source, the data the data source plugin returned to Grafana, the panel and dashboard configuration, and metadata about the capture. > Warning > > A diagnostic bundle records upstream traffic and error messages verbatim, without redaction. Request headers, query parameters, request and response bodies, and error text are all stored as they occurred, so a bundle can contain authentication tokens, passwords, and the contents of the data your queries returned. > > Treat a bundle as you would treat a credential. **Review it before you share it**, and **send it only to Grafana Labs Technical Support**, through your Grafana Labs support ticket. ## Before you begin To generate a diagnostic bundle, you need the following: - A self-managed Grafana instance. Diagnostic bundles aren’t available in Grafana Cloud. - The Grafana server administrator role. The menu items described on this page don’t appear for other users. - The `grafana.onDemandDiagnostics` feature toggle enabled. ### Enable the feature toggle The `grafana.onDemandDiagnostics` feature toggle is disabled by default. While it’s disabled, Grafana hides the diagnostics UI elements and the underlying endpoints return `404`. To enable it, add the following to your Grafana configuration file and restart Grafana: ini ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy ```ini [feature_toggles] enable = grafana.onDemandDiagnostics ``` To set a feature toggle in other ways, such as environment variables, refer to the [`feature_toggles` section of Configure Grafana](/docs/grafana/next/setup-grafana/configure-grafana/#feature_toggles) and [Manage feature toggles](/docs/grafana/next/administration/feature-toggles/#manage-feature-toggles). ## Generate a bundle for a single panel 1. Open the dashboard that contains the panel you want to diagnose. 2. Hover over any part of the panel to display the panel menu in the top right corner. 3. Click the menu and select **More** > **Download diagnostics**. Grafana opens a drawer describing what the bundle contains, including a **May contain sensitive data** warning. 4. Click **Download diagnostics**. Grafana re-runs the panel’s queries with capture active and downloads the bundle. The button reads **Generating…** while this happens, which can take a moment. 5. Review the bundle, then attach it to your support ticket. ## Generate a bundle for an entire dashboard Use a dashboard bundle when you don’t know which panel is at fault, or when the problem involves more than one panel. 1. Open the dashboard you want to diagnose. 2. In the dashboard toolbar, click **Export** > **Download diagnostics**. 3. Click **Download diagnostics**. Grafana captures panels one at a time and reports its progress, for example **Capturing panel 3 of 12**. Large dashboards can take a while to capture. 4. Review the bundle, then attach it to your support ticket. Grafana captures each panel independently, so one failing panel doesn’t stop the rest of the bundle from being produced. Skipped and failed panels are recorded in `manifest.json`. ## What the bundle contains Extract the bundle to review it: Bash ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy ```bash tar -xzf .tar.gz ``` A single-panel bundle contains the following files: Expand table | File | Contents | |-----------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | `traffic.har` | The HTTP requests and responses exchanged with the data source, in [HAR 1.2](http://www.softwareishard.com/blog/har-12-spec/) format, including bodies and timings. Connection failures are recorded as an entry with a comment. Not available for every data source; refer to [Data source support for capturing upstream traffic](#data-source-support-for-capturing-upstream-traffic). | | `querydata.json` | The queries Grafana submitted and the data the data source plugin returned, including per-query status, errors, and the schema and values of each returned frame. Large responses are reduced to a summary that records what was truncated. | | `query-error.txt` | The query error text, when the queries failed. | | `querydata-error.txt` | Present only when the query data couldn’t be written. The rest of the bundle is still produced. | | `panel.json` | The panel configuration: queries, transformations, field options, and visualization settings. | | `dashboard.json` | The dashboard configuration, for context. | A dashboard bundle contains a `panels/-/` directory holding those files for each panel, plus a `manifest.json` recording when the bundle was generated, how many panels ran, and the data sources, sizes, and any errors for each panel. ## Data source support for capturing upstream traffic `traffic.har` is usually the most valuable file in the bundle, but it isn’t available for every data source. When upstream traffic can’t be captured, Grafana still generates the rest of the bundle, and `querydata.json` still shows what the data source plugin returned. ### Data sources that capture upstream traffic The following data sources are built into Grafana and capture their upstream traffic with no extra configuration: - Prometheus - Graphite - InfluxDB - Azure Monitor ### Data sources that don’t capture upstream traffic - **SQL and other database data sources**, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and MongoDB. These communicate over a database wire protocol instead of HTTP, so there’s no HTTP exchange to record. - **Amazon CloudWatch.** Queries go through the AWS SDK, which doesn’t use the instrumented HTTP client that capture depends on. ## Limitations As an experimental feature, on-demand data source diagnostics currently has the following limitations: - **Grafana re-runs your queries.** A bundle reflects a fresh execution at the moment you generate it, not the original failure, and it bypasses the query cache. An intermittent failure might not reproduce, so a healthy-looking bundle doesn’t prove the problem is resolved. - **Queries run as you.** Because you generate the bundle as a server administrator, failures that depend on the affected user’s identity might not reproduce. Examples include per-user OAuth forwarding and row-level database permissions. If a specific user is affected, note that in your ticket. - A bundle captures panel and dashboard queries only. Failures in the variable picker, in a data source’s **Save & test** button, in annotation queries, or during alert rule evaluation don’t appear. - Server-side expressions and panel transformations are recorded in `panel.json` as configuration, not as the data that flows between them. So if `querydata.json` looks correct but the panel doesn’t, check that configuration. - **Large responses might be trimmed**, and less commonly, generation fails outright. The following limits apply: - `querydata.json` is capped at 1 GiB for a single panel and 1.5 GiB across a whole-dashboard bundle. A response over that limit is replaced by a summary that records what was left out, and the rest of the bundle still generates. For a dashboard bundle, once the shared 1.5 GiB budget is used up, the remaining panels’ query data is skipped, and the reason is recorded in `manifest.json`. - `traffic.har` is limited to 64 MiB per request or response body and 256 MiB of retained traffic per panel. A body over the per-body limit is kept as a truncated prefix, and its entry reports `bodySize: -1` with the actual size in `content.size`. When a panel’s traffic exceeds the per-panel limit, further entries keep their headers, sizes, and timings but omit the body text. - Generating a bundle can fail outright, instead of trimming, when the entire request to Grafana exceeds 100 MiB. That request includes the queries, the panel and dashboard JSON, and, for a single panel, the frames your browser is holding. This is uncommon, because it requires an unusually large payload from the browser itself—which a large data source response alone doesn’t produce. If you hit one of these limits, or a bundle takes an unreasonably long time to generate, reproduce the problem on a minimal setup instead of the original dashboard: - Use a temporary panel or dashboard holding only the misbehaving panel. - Narrow the time range to the shortest window that still reproduces the problem. Fewer returned data points means a smaller bundle and a faster capture. If you generate the bundle from a reduced dashboard, note that in your ticket. A smaller, reproducible setup is also easier for Grafana Labs Technical Support to work with. ## Related resources - [Send a panel to Grafana Labs support](/docs/grafana/next/troubleshooting/send-panel-to-grafana-support/) - [Generate a HAR capture to send to Grafana Labs support](/docs/grafana/next/troubleshooting/har-captures/) - [Troubleshoot data sources](/docs/grafana/next/datasources/troubleshooting/)