Version v2.6

Getting started

This guide will help you get started and acquainted with Grafana. It assumes you have a working Grafana 2.x instance, and have added at least one Data Source.

Beginner guides

Watch the 10min beginners guide to building dashboards to get a quick intro to setting up Dashboards and Panels.

Basic Concepts

Read the Basic Concepts document to get a crash course in key Grafana concepts.

Let's start with creating a new Dashboard. You can find the new Dashboard link at the bottom of the Dashboard picker. You now have a blank Dashboard.

The image above shows you the top header for a Dashboard.

Side menubar toggle: This toggles the side menu, allowing you to focus on the data presented in the dashboard. The side menu provides access to features unrelated to a Dashboard such as Users, Organizations, and Data Sources.
Dashboard dropdown: This dropdown shows you which Dashboard you are currently viewing, and allows you to easily switch to a new Dashboard. From here you can also create a new Dashboard, Import existing Dashboards, and manage Dashboard playlists.
Star Dashboard: Star (or unstar) the current Dashboard. Starred Dashboards will show up on your own Home Dashboard by default, and are a convenient way to mark Dashboards that you're interested in.
Share Dashboard: Share the current dashboard by creating a link or create a static Snapshot of it. Make sure the Dashboard is saved before sharing.
Save dashboard: The current Dashboard will be saved with the current Dashboard name.
Settings: Manage Dashboard settings and features such as Templating and Annotations.

Dashboards, Panels, Rows, the building blocks of Grafana...

Dashboards are at the core of what Grafana is all about. Dashboards are composed of individual Panels arranged on a number of Rows. Grafana ships with a variety of Panels. Grafana makes it easy to construct the right queries, and customize the display properties so that you can create the perfect Dashboard for your need. Each Panel can interact with data from any configured Grafana Data Source (currently InfluxDB, Graphite, OpenTSDB, and KairosDB). The Core Concepts guide explores these key ideas in detail.

Adding & Editing Graphs and Panels

You add panels via row menu. The row menu is the green icon to the left of each row.
To edit the graph you click on the graph title to open the panel menu, then Edit.
This should take you to the Metrics tab. In this tab you should see the editor for your default data source.

When you click the Metrics tab, you are presented with a Query Editor that is specific to the Panel Data Source. Use the Query Editor to build your queries and Grafana will visualize them in real time.

Zoom out time range
Time picker dropdown. Here you can access relative time range options, auto refresh options and set custom absolute time ranges.
Manual refresh button. Will cause all panels to refresh (fetch new data).
Row controls menu. Via this menu you can add panels to the row, set row height and more.
Dashboard panel. You edit panels by clicking the panel title.
Graph legend. You can change series colors, y-axis and series visibility directly from the legend.

Drag-and-Drop panels

You can Drag-and-Drop Panels within and between Rows. Click and hold the Panel title, and drag it to its new location. You can also easily resize panels by clicking the (-) and (+) icons.

Tips and shortcuts

Click the graph title and in the dropdown menu quickly change span or duplicate the panel.
Click the Save icon in the menu to save the dashboard with a new name
Click the Save icon in the menu and then advanced to export the dashboard to json file, or set it as your default dashboard.
Click the colored icon in the legend to select series color
Click series name in the legend to hide series
Ctrl/Shift/Meta + Click legend name to hide other series

Grafana loves the keyboard

Ctrl+S Saves the current dashboard
Ctrl+F Opens the dashboard finder / search
Ctrl+H Hides all controls (good for tv displays)
Hit Escape to exit graph when in fullscreen or edit mode

Documentation