Ronald McCollam [Grafana] | Flux Queries in Grafana 7 | InfluxDays Virtual Experience NA 2020

1. Ronald McCollam
Senior Solutions Engineer
Grafana Labs
Flux in Grafana 7*
*Plus a few relevant changes you’ll love, I

2. © 2020 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 2
Agenda
● Grafana refresher
● Grafana 7 quick overview
● Flux support in Grafana 7
● DEMO
○ Using FluxQL
○ Combining InfluxDB data with other sources
● Q&A

3. © 2020 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 3
About me
Senior Solutions Engineer at
Grafana Labs
Linux geek since the pre-1.0 days
Previous life in IT operations
management

4. What is Grafana and why should you care?
Grafana refresher

5. © 2020 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 5
What is Grafana?
Grafana allows you to query, visualize, alert on and
understand your metrics no matter where they are
stored. Create, explore, and share dashboards with
your team and foster a data driven culture.
Trusted and loved by the community.

6. © 2020 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 6
Grafana background
Open source project started by Torkel Ödegaard in 2014
Plugin system since Grafana 3.0 to support (nearly) any data
source

7. © 2020 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 7
Grafana background
Open source project started by Torkel Ödegaard in 2014
Plugin system since Grafana 3.0 to support (nearly) any data
source
Internet Famous star by RobStarrIF, Wikimedia Commons (modified by Ronald McCollam)

8. © 2020 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 8
Grafana philosophy:
Observability is owned by an entire organization
No one tool can do all things for all
people. Each tool has specific features
and its own niche where it is best of
breed.
Grafana Labs strives for an open and
composable solution to unite data
across the great technologies you
selected and deployed.
By unifying your existing data,
wherever it lives, we help deliver
unprecedented insights, while
maintaining choice, and flexibility.

9. Quick overview of new/changed features
Grafana 7

10. © 2020 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 10
Grafana 7
Released May 2020
Most ambitious Grafana
release to date
Many “under the hood”
changes

11. © 2020 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 11
Too many changes to talk about here!
USAGE ANALYTICS
Helps large companies get
better insight into the
behavior and utilization of
their users, dashboards,
and data sources
UNIFIED DATA MODEL
Viz can come from
data/context, not manual.
Smart viz based on data
(min/max/mean graphs,
etc). Basic BI.
TRACING
Add trace UI to show traces
from tracing data sources and
Jaeger datasource within Loki
to reduce mean time to
resolution
CUSTOM TIME FORMATS
AND TIME ZONE SELECTION
Better UZ and viz options. Better
selection of viz with live
previews.
NEW VIS AND PANEL EDITING
Enhanced UX and visualization
options for better consistency and
usability including a new table panel,
a new grid layout engine and an
improved experience for editing
panels
NEW TABLE AND GRAPH
PANELS
Move to React enables more
reusability of components, scaling
of multiple stats. New single stat
and bar graph already available
PLUGINS PLATFORM
Advanced platform so
users can easily create
new Plugins faster and
more efficiently
AWS CLOUDWATCH
LOGS
Added support for AWS
CloudWatch Logs
TRANSFORMATIONS
The new Transformations
capabilities allow users to go
beyond data visualization and
transform all types of data

12. © 2020 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 12
But there are two worth mentioning...
USAGE ANALYTICS
Helps large companies get
better insight into the
behavior and utilization of
their users, dashboards,
and data sources
UNIFIED DATA MODEL
Viz can come from
data/context, not manual.
Smart viz based on data
(min/max/mean graphs,
etc). Basic BI.
TRACING
Add trace UI to show traces
from tracing data sources and
Jaeger datasource within Loki
to reduce mean time to
resolution
CUSTOM TIME FORMATS
AND TIME ZONE SELECTION
Better UZ and viz options. Better
selection of viz with live
previews.
NEW VIS AND PANEL EDITING
Enhanced UX and visualization
options for better consistency and
usability including a new table panel,
a new grid layout engine and an
improved experience for editing
panels
NEW TABLE AND GRAPH
PANELS
Move to React enables more
reusability of components, scaling
of multiple stats. New single stat
and bar graph already available
PLUGINS PLATFORM
Advanced platform so
users can easily create
new Plugins faster and
more efficiently
AWS CLOUDWATCH
LOGS
Added support for AWS
CloudWatch Logs
TRANSFORMATIONS
The new Transformations
capabilities allow users to go
beyond data visualization and
transform all types of data

13. © 2020 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 13
Unified data model
A new unified data model makes Grafana more consistent and easier to use because it provides users with a consistent
way to define data sources, conventions, user defaults, and override rules
Previous Versions of Grafana
Each visualization had slightly different ways to define options
Grafana 7.0
Consistent UI for specifying override rules and is extensible for custom panel specific
options
Singlestat
Options
Table
Override
Rules
Graph
Thresholds

14. © 2020 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 14
Transformations
Now that we have the same representation of data regardless of the underlying data source, we can manipulate and
combine that data in sensible ways
Apply a
transformation
!
Define labels in a database Labels appear in the table as fields

15. The moment you’ve been waiting for
Flux support in Grafna 7

16. © 2020 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 16
InfluxDB and Grafana
Influx support added in 2014… but this was always InfluxQL
Using InfluxQL, Grafana’s visualizations were limited
● Sort by time only
● Group by tags/time only
● Single source only (no joins)

17. © 2020 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 17
Full Flux support in Grafana 7.1

18. DEMO

19. © 2020 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 19
Summary
● Flux query support is now available!
● InfluxQL and Flux are both supported (where applicable)
● New data model means you can combine data in InfluxDB
with other sources -- more powerful visualizations
● Grafana ♥ InfluxDB

20. Q&A

21. © 2020 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 21
Ronald McCollam
Senior Solutions Engineer, Grafana Labs
Place image here
ronald@grafana.com
@rm@mastodon.amaseto.com
@ronaldmccollam