Grafana

Platform for data analytics and monitoring

Grafana

Developer(s)| Grafana Labs
Stable release|

10.2.2[1] / 20 November 2023; 29 days ago (20 November 2023)

Repository|

* github.com/grafana/grafana

Written in| Go and TypeScript
Operating system| Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS
Type| Business intelligence
License| GNU Affero General Public License, version 3.0
Website| grafana.com

* Free and open-source software portal

Grafana is a multi-platform open source analytics and interactive visualization web application. It provides charts, graphs, and alerts for the web when connected to supported data sources.

There is also a licensed Grafana Enterprise version with additional capabilities available as a self-hosted installation or an account on the Grafana Labs cloud service.[2] It is expandable through a plug-in system. End users can create complex monitoring dashboards[3] using interactive query builders. Grafana is divided into a front end and back end, written in TypeScript and Go, respectively.[4]

As a visualization tool, Grafana is a popular component in monitoring stacks,[5] often used in combination with time series databases such as InfluxDB, Prometheus[6][7] and Graphite;[8] monitoring platforms such as Sensu,[9] Icinga, Checkmk,[10] Zabbix, Netdata,[7] and PRTG; SIEMs such as Elasticsearch[6] and Splunk; and other data sources. The Grafana user interface was originally based on version 3 of Kibana.[11]

## History[edit]

Grafana was first released in 2014 by Torkel Ödegaard as an offshoot of a project at Orbitz. It targeted time series databases such as InfluxDB, OpenTSDB, and Prometheus, but evolved to support relational databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server.

In 2019, Grafana Labs secured $24 million in Series A funding.[12]

In 2020 Series B funding round: $50 million.[13]

The conference GrafanaCon 2020 was scheduled for May 13–14, 2020, in Amsterdam, but was changed to a two-day online live streaming event due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[14][15]

Grafana acquired k6 in 2021.[16][17]

In 2021, Grafana Labs secured a Series C funding round of $220 million.[18]

## Adoption[edit]

Grafana is widely used,[5] including in Wikimedia's infrastructure.[19] Grafana has over 1000 paying customers, including Bloomberg, JP Morgan Chase, eBay, PayPal, and Sony.[16]

## Licensing[edit]

Previously, Grafana was licensed with an Apache License 2.0 license and used a CLA based on the Harmony Contributor Agreement.[20]

As of 2021 April 20, Grafana is licensed under an AGPLv3 license.[21] Contributors to Grafana need to sign a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) that gives Grafana Labs the right to relicense Grafana in the future. The CLA is based on The Apache Software Foundation Individual Contributor License Agreement.[22]

## Products[edit]

### Open source[edit]

* Loki - a log aggregation platform based on Prometheus first made available in 2019[23]
* Mimir - a metric visualization tool released in 2022 that replaced Cortex[24]
* Tempo - a tool for log tracing, released in 2021[25]

## References[edit]

1. ^ "Release 10.2.2". 20 November 2023. Retrieved 1 December 2023.
2. ^ "Grafana Enterprise Stack". Grafana Labs. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
3. ^ Perrin, Jim. "Monitoring Linux performance with Grafana". OpenSource.com. Retrieved 2018-08-14.
4. ^ Synopsys. "The grafana Open Source Project on Open Hub: Languages Page". Open Hub. Retrieved 2021-03-19.
5. ^ a b Anadiotis, George. "DevOps and observability in the 2020s". ZDNet. Retrieved 2020-02-04.
6. ^ a b Jones, Anna (2019-01-25). "Open Source Monitoring Stack: Prometheus and Grafana". Bizety. Retrieved 2019-05-08.
7. ^ a b DeLosSantos, Louis (2018). "Netdata, Prometheus, Grafana stack". Netdata Documentation. Retrieved 2019-05-08.
8. ^ Assaraf, Ariel. "Grafana Vs Graphite". Coralogix.
9. ^ Kumar, Santhosh; Muruganantham, Logeshkumar (2017-01-21). "Step By Step: Install and Configure Sensu + Grafana". Powerupcloud Tech Blog. Retrieved 2019-05-08.
10. ^ "Exporting Check_MK Performance Data to Grafana". TruePath Technologies. 2018. Retrieved 2020-09-24.
11. ^ Ödegaard, Torkel (2019-09-03). "The (Mostly) Complete History of Grafana UX". grafana.com. Retrieved 2020-10-06.
12. ^ Anadiotis, George. "Is open source the way to go for observability? Grafana Labs scores $24M Series A funding to try to prove this". ZDNet. Retrieved 2020-02-04.
13. ^ Grafana (2020-08-17). "Grafana Labs Raises $50 Million to Accelerate R&D Investments in Open Source Logs, Metrics and Composable Observability". GlobeNewswire News Room. Retrieved 2021-07-23.
14. ^ "GrafanaCon 2020". Retrieved 2020-05-04.
15. ^ Dam, Julie (2019-12-12). "Register Now! GrafanaCon 2020 Is Coming to Amsterdam May 13-14". grafana.com.
16. ^ a b "Grafana Labs acquires load-testing startup K6". VentureBeat. 2021-06-17. Retrieved 2021-07-27.
17. ^ "Grafana Labs Acquires k6 to Add Open Source Load Testing Tool - DevOps.com". devops.com. Retrieved 2021-07-27.
18. ^ Grafana (2021-08-24). "Grafana Labs Raises $220 Million Round at $3 Billion Valuation". Bloomberg. Retrieved 2021-08-22.
19. ^ "grafana.wikimedia.org". Wikitech. Retrieved 2021-04-09.
20. ^ "Grafana Labs Contributor License Agreement". Retrieved 2021-01-22.
21. ^ Dutt, Raj (2021-04-20). "Grafana, Loki, and Tempo will be relicensed to AGPLv3". grafana.com. Retrieved 2021-04-21.
22. ^ "Grafana Labs Contributor License Agreement". grafana.com. 2021-04-20. Retrieved 2021-04-21.
23. ^ Lobo, Savia (November 20, 2019). "Grafana Labs announces general availability of Loki 1.0, a multi-tenant log aggregation system". Packt Hub. Retrieved 19 April 2023.
24. ^ Gain, B. Cameron (August 10, 2022). "The Great Grafana Mimir and Cortex Split". The New Stack. Retrieved 19 April 2023.
25. ^ Deutscher, Maria (June 8, 2021). "Grafana Labs eases IT monitoring with Tempo tracing tool and new Grafana release". Silicon Angle. Retrieved 19 April 2023.