Get started on Grafana Labs

Build your first dashboard

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 12:22:13 +0000

Build your first dashboard

This topic helps you get started with Grafana and build your first dashboard. To learn more about Grafana, refer to What is Grafana?.

Note: Grafana also offers a free account with Grafana Cloud to help getting started even easier and faster. You can install Grafana to self-host or get a free Grafana Cloud account.

Install Grafana

Grafana can be installed on many different operating systems. For a list of the minimum hardware and software requirements, as well as instructions on installing Grafana, refer to Install Grafana.

To sign in to Grafana for the first time:

Open your web browser and go to http://localhost:3000/.

The default HTTP port that Grafana listens to is 3000 unless you have configured a different port.
On the sign-in page, enter admin for the username and password.
Click Sign in.

If successful, you will see a prompt to change the password.
Click OK on the prompt and change your password.

Note: We strongly recommend that you change the default administrator password.

Create a dashboard

To create your first dashboard:

Click the New dashboard item under the Dashboards icon in the side menu.
On the dashboard, click Add an empty panel.
In the New dashboard/Edit panel view, go to the Query tab.
Configure your query by selecting -- Grafana -- from the data source selector.

This generates the Random Walk dashboard.
Click the Save icon in the top right corner of your screen to save the dashboard.
Add a descriptive name, and then click Save.

Congratulations, you have created your first dashboard and it is displaying results.

Next steps

Continue to experiment with what you have built, try the explore workflow or another visualization feature. Refer to Data sources for a list of supported data sources and instructions on how to add a data source. The following topics will be of interest to you:

Admins

The following topics are of interest to Grafana server admin users:

Get started with Grafana and Prometheus

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 12:22:13 +0000

Get started with Grafana and Prometheus

Prometheus is an open source monitoring system for which Grafana provides out-of-the-box support. This topic walks you through the steps to create a series of dashboards in Grafana to display system metrics for a server monitored by Prometheus.

Note: You can configure a Grafana Cloud instance to display system metrics without having to host Grafana yourself. A free forever plan provides 10,000 active series for metrics.

Install Grafana and add your first dashboard

Use the instructions in Build your first dashboard to:

Install Grafana.
Sign in to Grafana.
Build your first dashboard.

Download Prometheus and node_exporter

Prometheus, like Grafana, can be installed on many different operating systems. Refer to the Prometheus download page, which lists all stable versions of Prometheus components. Download the following components:

Install Prometheus node_exporter

Prometheus node_exporter is a widely used tool that exposes system metrics. Install node_exporter on all hosts you want to monitor. For instructions on how to install node_exporter, refer to the Installing and running the node_exporter section in Prometheus documentation.

Note: The instructions in the referenced topic are intended for Linux users. You may have to alter the instructions slightly depending on your operating system. For example, if you are on Windows, use the windows_exporter instead.

Install and configure Prometheus

Install Prometheus following instructions in the Installation topic in the Prometheus documentation.
Configure Prometheus to monitor the hosts where you installed node_exporter. In order to do this, modify Prometheus’s configuration file. By default, Prometheus looks for the file prometheus.yml in the current working directory. This behavior can be changed via the --config.file command line flag. For example, some Prometheus installers use it to set the configuration file to /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml. Here is an example of the code you will need to add.
```
 # A scrape configuration containing exactly one endpoint to scrape from node_exporter running on a host:
 scrape_configs:
     # The job name is added as a label `job=<job_name>` to any timeseries scraped from this config.
     - job_name: 'node'

     # metrics_path defaults to '/metrics'
     # scheme defaults to 'http'.

     static_configs:
     - targets: ['<hostname>:9100']
```

Start the Prometheus service:

 ./prometheus --config.file=./prometheus.yml

Check Prometheus metrics in Grafana Explore view

In your Grafana instance, go to the Explore view and build queries to experiment with the metrics you want to monitor. Here you can also debug issues related to collecting metrics from Prometheus. Pay special attention to the Prometheus-specific features to avail custom querying experience for Prometheus.

Start building dashboards

Now that you have a curated list of queries, create dashboards to render system metrics monitored by Prometheus. When you install Prometheus and node_exporter or windows_exporter, you will find recommended dashboards for use.

The following image shows a dashboard with three panels showing some system metrics.

To learn more:

Grafana documentation: Prometheus data source
Prometheus documentation: What is Prometheus?

Get started with Grafana and InfluxDB

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 12:22:13 +0000

Get started with Grafana and InfluxDB

InfluxDB is an open-source time series database (TSDB) developed by InfluxData. It is optimized for fast, high-availability storage and retrieval of time series data in fields such as operations monitoring, application metrics, IoT sensor data, and real-time analytics.

Note: You can also configure a Grafana Cloud instance to display system metrics without having to host Grafana yourself. Grafana offers a free account with Grafana Cloud to help you get started.

Install Grafana and add your first dashboard

Use the instructions in Build your first dashboard to:

Install Grafana.
Sign in to Grafana.
Build your first dashboard.

Get InfluxDB

You can download InfluxDB and install it locally or you can sign up for InfluxDB Cloud. Windows installers are not available for some versions of InfluxDB.

Install other InfluxDB software

Install Telegraf. This tool is an agent that helps you get metrics into InfluxDB. For more information, refer to Telegraf documentation.

If you chose to use InfluxDB Cloud, then you should download and install the InfluxDB Cloud CLI. This tool allows you to send command line instructions to your cloud account. For more information, refer to Influx CLI documentation.

Get data into InfluxDB

If you downloaded and installed InfluxDB on your local machine, then use the Quick Start feature to visualize InfluxDB metrics.

If you are using the cloud account, then the wizards will guide you through the initial process. For more information, refer to Configure Telegraf.

Note for Windows users:

Windows users might need to make additional adjustments. Look for special instructions in the InfluxData documentation and Using Telegraf on Windows blog post. The regular system monitoring template in InfluxDB Cloud is not compatible with Windows. Windows users who use InfluxDB Cloud to monitor their system will need to use the Windows System Monitoring Template.

Add your InfluxDB data source to Grafana

You can have more than one InfluxDB data source defined in Grafana.

Follow the general instructions to add a data source.
Decide if you will use InfluxQL or Flux as your query language.
- For InfluxQL, refer to InfluxDB data source for information about specific data source fields.
- For Flux, refer to Flux query language in Grafana for information about specific data source fields.

InfluxDB guides

InfluxDB publishes guidance for connecting different versions of their product to Grafana.

InfluxDB OSS or Enterprise 1.8+. To turn on Flux, refer to Configure InfluxDB. Select your InfluxDB version in the upper right corner.
InfluxDB OSS or Enterprise 2.x. Refer to Use Grafana with InfluxDB. Select your InfluxDB version in the upper right corner.
InfluxDB Cloud. Refer to Use Grafana with InfluxDB Cloud.

Important tips

Make sure your Grafana token has read access. If it doesn’t, then you’ll get an authentication error and be unable to connect Grafana to InfluxDB.
Avoid apostrophes and other non-standard characters in bucket and token names.
If the text name of the organization or bucket doesn’t work, then try the ID number.
If you change your bucket name in InfluxDB, then you must also change it in Grafana and your Telegraf .conf file as well.

Add a query

This step varies depending on the query language that you selected when you set up your data source in Grafana.

InfluxQL query language

In the query editor, click select measurement.

Grafana displays a list of possible series. Click one to select it, and Grafana graphs any available data. If there is no data to display, then try another selection or check your data source.

Flux query language

Create a simple Flux query.

Add a panel.
In the query editor, select your InfluxDB-Flux data source. For more information, refer to Queries.
Select the Table visualization.
In the query editor text field, enter buckets() and then click outside of the query editor.

This generic query returns a list of buckets.

You can also create Flux queries in the InfluxDB Explore view.

In your browser, log in to the InfluxDB native UI (OSS is typically something like http://localhost:8086 or for InfluxDB Cloud use: https://cloud2.influxdata.com).
Click Explore to open the Data Explorer.
The InfluxDB Data Explorer provides two mechanisms for creating Flux queries: a graphical query editor and a script editor. Using the graphical query editor, create a query. It will look something like this:
Click Script Editor to view the text of the query, and then copy all the lines of your Flux code, which will look something like this:
In Grafana, add a panel and then paste your Flux code into the query editor.
Click Apply. Your new panel should be visible with data from your Flux query.

Check InfluxDB metrics in Grafana Explore

In your Grafana instance, go to the Explore view and build queries to experiment with the metrics you want to monitor. Here you can also debug issues related to collecting metrics.

Start building dashboards

There you go! Use Explore and Data Explorer to experiment with your data, and add the queries that you like to your dashboard as panels. Have fun!

Here are some resources to learn more:

Grafana documentation: InfluxDB data source
InfluxDB documentation: Comparison of Flux vs InfluxQL

Get started with Grafana and MS SQL Server

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 12:22:13 +0000

Get started with Grafana and MS SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server is a popular relational database management system that is widely used in development and production environments. This topic walks you through the steps to create a series of dashboards in Grafana to display metrics from a MS SQL Server database.

Download MS SQL Server

MS SQL Server can be installed on Windows or Linux operating systems and also on Docker containers. Refer to the MS SQL Server downloads page, for a complete list of all available options.

Install MS SQL Server

You can install MS SQL Server on the host running Grafana or on a remote server. To install the software from the downloads page, follow their setup prompts.

If you are on a Windows host but want to use Grafana and MS SQL data source on a Linux environment, refer to the WSL to set up your Grafana development environment. This will allow you to leverage the resources available in grafana/grafana GitHub repository. Here you will find a collection of supported data sources, including MS SQL Server, along with test data and pre-configured dashboards for use.

Add the MS SQL data source

In the Grafana side menu, hover your cursor over the Configuration (gear) icon and then click Data Sources.
Filter by mssql and select the Microsoft SQL Server option.
Click Add data source in the top right header to open the configuration page.
Enter the information specified in the table below, then click Save & Test.

Name	Description
`Name`	The data source name. This is how you refer to the data source in panels and queries.
`Host`	The IP address/hostname and optional port of your MS SQL instance. If port is omitted, the default 1433 will be used.
`Database`	Name of your MS SQL database.
`User`	Database user’s login/username.
`Password`	Database user’s password.

For installations from the grafana/grafana repository, gdev-mssql data source is available. Once you add this data source, you can use the Datasource tests - MSSQL dashboard with three panels showing metrics generated from a test database.

Optionally, play around this dashboard and customize it to:

Create different panels.
Change titles for panels.
Change frequency of data polling.
Change the period for which the data is displayed.
Rearrange and resize panels.

Start building dashboards

Now that you have gained some idea of using the pre-packaged MS SQL data source and some test data, the next step is to setup your own instance of MS SQL Server database and data your development or sandbox area.

To fetch data from your own instance of MS SQL Server, add the data source using instructions in Step 4 of this topic. In Grafana Explore build queries to experiment with the metrics you want to monitor.

Once you have a curated list of queries, create dashboards to render metrics from the SQL Server database. For troubleshooting, user permissions, known issues, and query examples, refer to Using Microsoft SQL Server in Grafana.

Get started on Grafana Labs

Build your first dashboard

Build your first dashboard

Install Grafana

Sign in to Grafana

Create a dashboard

Next steps

Admins

Get started with Grafana and Prometheus

Get started with Grafana and Prometheus

Install Grafana and add your first dashboard

Download Prometheus and node_exporter

Install Prometheus node_exporter

Install and configure Prometheus

Check Prometheus metrics in Grafana Explore view

Start building dashboards

Get started with Grafana and InfluxDB

Get started with Grafana and InfluxDB

Install Grafana and add your first dashboard

Get InfluxDB

Install other InfluxDB software

Get data into InfluxDB

Note for Windows users:

Add your InfluxDB data source to Grafana

InfluxDB guides

Important tips

Add a query

InfluxQL query language

Flux query language

Check InfluxDB metrics in Grafana Explore

Start building dashboards

Get started with Grafana and MS SQL Server

Get started with Grafana and MS SQL Server

Download MS SQL Server

Install MS SQL Server

Add the MS SQL data source

Start building dashboards