NetApp ONTAP Data Source Plugin for Grafana

Description

The NetApp ONTAP DataSource Plugin is a Grafana backend datasource plugin that enables on-demand querying and visualization of storage metrics and operational data from NetApp ONTAP systems using the ONTAP REST API.

NetApp ONTAP is an enterprise-grade storage operating system that provides unified data management across SAN, NAS, and cloud environments. It offers capabilities for storage provisioning, performance monitoring, data protection, and network management. This plugin provides visibility into ONTAP clusters by allowing users to explore and monitor key resources such as clusters, volumes, LUNs, disks, and network components directly within Grafana dashboards.

Features

• Query and visualize storage metrics and operational data from NetApp ONTAP directly within Grafana
• Support for multiple ONTAP resource types including Cluster, Volume, LUN, Disk, Ethernet Port, and Network Interface
• Interval-based querying mechanism to align with ONTAP REST API constraints
• Real-time monitoring and analysis of storage performance and health metrics
• Flexible query configuration to explore different resource-level insights
• Compatibility with Grafana panels for building custom dashboards and visualizations
• Built-in retry logic with exponential backoff for transient failures
• Optimized API interaction to ensure efficient data retrieval from ONTAP systems

Compatibility

Visuals

Configuration Editor

Query Editor

Installation

Requirements

• Grafana >= 12.3.0
• Access to a NetApp ONTAP cluster
• ONTAP REST API enabled on the cluster
• Valid ONTAP credentials (Username & Password) with appropriate permissions

Obtaining ONTAP Credentials

1. Login to the ONTAP System Manager or CLI.
2. Ensure that the REST API is enabled on the cluster.
3. Create or use an existing user with sufficient privileges to query cluster and storage resources.
4. Note down the following details:
   • Cluster Management IP / Hostname
   • Username
   • Password

Install the Plugin

Install the plugin from the Grafana Plugin Catalog or using the Grafana CLI:

grafana cli plugins install crestdata-netappontap-datasource

After installation, restart the Grafana server for the plugin to be loaded.

Configure the Data Source

1. In Grafana, navigate to Connections > Data Sources > Add data source.
2. Search for NetApp ONTAP and select it.
3. Fill in the required configuration fields:

1. Click Save & Test. The health check will validate your credentials against the NetApp ONTAP API.

Usage

Query Editor

Once the data source is configured, you can create panels using the query editor with the following parameters:

Time Range Handling

The NetApp ONTAP REST API does not support querying data using arbitrary from and to timestamps.

To address this:

• The plugin uses a predefined interval parameter instead of Grafana’s default time range
• Users must select from supported intervals (e.g., 1h, 1d, 1w, etc.)
• Grafana time picker does not directly influence the query results

This ensures compatibility with the ONTAP API while maintaining predictable query behavior.

Error Handling and Retry Strategy

Retries are performed only for transient failures:

• HTTP 429 (rate limited)
• HTTP 5xx responses (500–599)
• Network/connection-level errors
• Errors while reading the response body

Max retry attempts: 3, with exponential backoff.

Non-retryable: HTTP 4xx errors (e.g., 401, 403) are returned immediately.

Pre-built Dashboards

The plugin ships with six pre-built dashboards for quick visualization and monitoring of ONTAP environments.

1. NetApp ONTAP – Cluster Overview — Provides a high-level view of cluster performance, including:

• Throughput metrics
• IOPs metrics
• Latency metrics

2. NetApp ONTAP – Disks — Displays disk-level insights, including:

• Disk inventory and status
• Disk performance metrics

3. NetApp ONTAP – Volumes — Detailed monitoring of storage volumes, including:

• Volume inventory
• Throughput, IOPs, Latency metrics

4. NetApp ONTAP – LUNs — Insights into LUN performance and usage:

• LUN details
• Throughput, IOPs, Latency metrics

5. NetApp ONTAP – Network Interface — Monitoring of network interfaces:

• Interface details
• Throughput metrics

6. NetApp ONTAP – Ethernet Ports — Provides visibility into physical network ports:

• Ethernet port details
• Throughput metrics

Limitations

API Limitation: The underlying API does not support querying data using arbitrary time ranges defined by explicit from and to timestamps. Instead, it only allows data retrieval based on a fixed set of predefined interval values (e.g., 1h, 1d, 1w, 1m, 1y) This restricts the ability to fetch data for custom time windows and limits flexibility in time-based filtering.

Design Adaptation To accommodate the above limitation, the integration does not utilize the default from and to time range parameters provided by Grafana. Instead, a custom interval parameter has been introduced. This interval parameter aligns with the set of supported values exposed by the API and enables users to select from predefined time ranges. While this ensures compatibility with the API, it also means that users cannot define fully custom time intervals within Grafana.

Support

For issues, questions, or feature requests, please open an issue in this repository.

Roadmap

See the open issues for a list of proposed features and known issues.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! To get started with development:

cd crestdata-netappontap-datasource
Frontend
npm install
npm run dev        # development mode with watch
npm run build      # production build
Backend
mage -v            # build backend binaries
Tests
npm run test       # frontend tests (Jest)
npm run test:ci    # CI mode
go test ./…      # backend tests
Linting
npm run lint
npm run lint:fix
Local Grafana instance (Docker)
npm run server
E2E tests (Playwright)
npm run e2e

Before submitting a pull request:

1. Run the linter and ensure all tests pass.
2. Validate the plugin using the Grafana Plugin Validator.
3. Ensure any changes to plugin.json are intentional — a Grafana server restart is required after such changes.

Authors and Acknowledgment

Developed by Crest Data.

License

This plugin is distributed under the Apache 2.0 License. See the LICENSE file for details.

References

• NetApp ONTAP Rest API Documentation
• Grafana Plugin Development
• Grafana Plugin Publishing Best Practices