Grafana 10 breaking change: update Athena datasource plugin to >=2.9.3

Grafana 10.0.0 was shipped with the new React 18 upgrade. Changes in batching of state updates in React 18 cause a bug in the query editor in Athena versions <=2.9.2. If you’re using Grafana@>=10.0.0, please update your plugin to version 2.9.3 or higher in your Grafana instance management console.

Athena data source for Grafana

The Athena data source plugin allows you to query and visualize Athena data metrics from within Grafana.

This topic explains options, variables, querying, and other options specific to this data source. Refer to Add a data source for instructions on how to add a data source to Grafana.

Installation

Grafana Cloud

If you do not have a Grafana Cloud account, you can sign up for one here.

1. Click on the Install plugin button on the AWS Athena page on Grafana.com. This will automatically add the plugin to your Grafana instance. It might take up to 30 seconds to install.

2. Login to your Hosted Grafana instance (go to your instances page in your profile): https://grafana.com/orgs/<yourUserName>/instances and the AWS Athena data source will be installed.

Configure the data source in Grafana

To configure the Athena data source in Grafana, toggle the menu, open Connections, then click Data Sources and then either

• click Add new data source, and then click the AWS Athena data source, if you do not have the AWS Athena data source or
• click Athena if you already have the AWS Athena data source.

Authentication

Open source Grafana enables the 'AWS SDK Default', 'Credentials file', and 'Access and secret key' authentication provider methods by default. Grafana Cloud enables 'Access and secret' by default. See select an authentication method for more details.

For more information about authentication options and configuration details, see AWS authentication topic.

IAM policies

Grafana needs permissions granted via IAM to be able to read Athena metrics. You can attach these permissions to IAM roles and utilize Grafana's built-in support for assuming roles. Note that you will need to configure the required policy before adding the data source to Grafana.

Depending on the source of the data you'd query with Athena, you may need different permissions. AWS provides some predefined policies that you can check here.

This is an example of a minimal policy you can use to query Athena. It is based on the AmazonAthenaFullAccess policy, without write permissions when possible, since Grafana should be used as read-only:

NOTE: Update the ARN of the S3 bucket if you are using a custom one.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "AthenaQueryAccess",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "athena:ListDatabases",
        "athena:ListDataCatalogs",
        "athena:ListWorkGroups",
        "athena:GetDatabase",
        "athena:GetDataCatalog",
        "athena:GetQueryExecution",
        "athena:GetQueryResults",
        "athena:GetTableMetadata",
        "athena:GetWorkGroup",
        "athena:ListTableMetadata",
        "athena:StartQueryExecution",
        "athena:StopQueryExecution"
      ],
      "Resource": ["*"]
    },
    {
      "Sid": "GlueReadAccess",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "glue:GetDatabase",
        "glue:GetDatabases",
        "glue:GetTable",
        "glue:GetTables",
        "glue:GetPartition",
        "glue:GetPartitions",
        "glue:BatchGetPartition"
      ],
      "Resource": ["*"]
    },
    {
      "Sid": "AthenaS3Access",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "s3:GetBucketLocation",
        "s3:GetObject",
        "s3:ListBucket",
        "s3:ListBucketMultipartUploads",
        "s3:ListMultipartUploadParts",
        "s3:AbortMultipartUpload",
        "s3:PutObject"
      ],
      "Resource": ["arn:aws:s3:::aws-athena-query-results-*"]
    },
    {
      "Sid": "AthenaExamplesS3Access",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["s3:GetObject", "s3:ListBucket"],
      "Resource": ["arn:aws:s3:::athena-examples*"]
    }
  ]
}

Query Athena data

The provided query editor is a standard SQL query editor. Grafana includes some macros to help with writing more complex timeseries queries.

Macros

Table Visualization

Most queries in Athena will be best represented by a table visualization. Any query will display data in a table. Any query that returns results will display data in a table..

This example returns results for a table visualization:

SELECT {column_1}, {column_2} FROM {table};

Timeseries and Graph visualizations

Time series ad graph visualizations, you must:

• Select a column with a date or datetime type. The date column must be in ascending order (using ORDER BY column ASC).
• Also select a numeric column.

Inspecting the query

Grafana supports macros that Athena does not, which means a query might not work when copied and pasted directly into Athena. To view the full interpolated query, which works directly in Athena, click the Query Inspector button. The full query is displayed under the Query tab.

Templates and variables

To add a new Athena query variable, refer to Add a query variable.

Any value queried from an Athena table can be used as a variable.

After creating a variable, you can use it in your Athena queries by using Variable syntax. For more information about variables, refer to Templates and variables.

Annotations

Annotations allow you to overlay rich event information on top of graphs. You can add annotations by clicking on panels or by adding annotation queries via the Dashboard menu / Annotations view.

Example query to automatically add annotations:

SELECT
  time as time,
  environment as tags,
  humidity as text
FROM
  tableName
WHERE
  $__dateFilter(time) and humidity > 95

The following table represents the values of the columns taken into account to render annotations:

Provision Athena data source

You can configure the Athena data source using configuration files with Grafana's provisioning system or using Grafana's Datasource JSON API . For more information, refer to the provisioning docs page.

Here are some provisioning examples.

Using AWS SDK (default)

apiVersion: 1
datasources:
  - name: Athena
    type: grafana-athena-datasource
    jsonData:
      authType: default
      defaultRegion: eu-west-2
      catalog: AwsDataCatalog
      database: '<your athena database>'
      workgroup: '<your athena workgroup>'

Using credentials' profile name (non-default)

apiVersion: 1
datasources:

name: Athena
type: grafana-athena-datasource
jsonData:
authType: credentials
defaultRegion: eu-west-2
profile: secondary
catalog: AwsDataCatalog
database: ‘<your athena database>’
workgroup: ‘<your athena workgroup>’

Using accessKey and secretKey

apiVersion: 1
datasources:

name: Athena
type: grafana-athena-datasource
jsonData:
authType: keys
defaultRegion: eu-west-2
secureJsonData:
accessKey: ‘<your access key>’
secretKey: ‘<your secret key>’
catalog: AwsDataCatalog
database: ‘<your athena database>’
workgroup: ‘<your athena workgroup>’

Using AWS SDK Default and ARN of IAM Role to Assume

apiVersion: 1
datasources:
  - name: Athena
    type: grafana-athena-datasource
    jsonData:
      authType: default
      assumeRoleArn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:root
      defaultRegion: eu-west-2
      catalog: AwsDataCatalog
      database: '<your athena database>'
      workgroup: '<your athena workgroup>'

There are also some optional parameters to configure this datasource:

jsonData:
  endpoint: https://'{service}.{region}.amazonaws.com'
  externalId: '<your role external id>'
  outputLocation: s3://'<your s3 bucket>'

Acknowledgment

The backend driver is based on the implementation of uber/athenadriver, which provides a fully-featured driver for AWS Athena.

Get the most out of the plugin

• Add Annotations.
• Configure and use Templates and variables.
• Add Transformations.
• Set up alerting; refer to Alerts overview.

Async Query Data Support

Async query data support enables an asynchronous query handling flow. Queries are handled over multiple requests (starting, checking its status, and fetching the results) instead of starting and resolving a query over a single request. This is useful for queries that can potentially run for a long time and timeout.

Async query data support is enabled by default in all Athena datasources.

Async Query Caching

To enable query caching for async queries, you need to be on Grafana version 10.1 or above, and to set the feature toggles useCachingService and awsAsyncQueryCaching to true. You'll also need to configure query caching for the specific Athena datasource.

Query Result Reuse

Query result reuse is a feature that allows Athena to reuse query results from previous queries. You can enable it per query by selecting the Enabled checkbox under the Query result reuse section in the query editor. Learn more in the AWS Athena documentation.

Note: Result reuse requires Athena to be on engine version 3. AWS provides instructions for Changing Athena engine versions.