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Section 3 · Put your data to work

Rename a data source without breaking dashboards, panels, or alert rules

Estimated time: 1 min

Dashboards reference a data source by ID, not name

A common pitfall after connecting involves how Grafana tracks your data sources. Every data source has a unique identifier (UID). Your dashboards, panels, and alert rules point to that UID behind the scenes, not to the display name you see.

Renaming a data source in place keeps the same UID, so a panel keeps working. Deleting and recreating it gives a new UID, so the panel can't find the data source.

This matters most when you change a data source:

  • Rename in place when you want a new name. An edited name keeps the same UID, so everything that uses the data source keeps working.
  • Avoid delete-and-recreate. A recreated data source gets a new UID, so existing panels and alert rules can no longer find it and fail to load.
  • Imported dashboards from another organization may reference a UID that doesn’t exist in your stack. Repoint each panel to a data source you have.