Prometheus and Grafana: Visualizing Application Performance

Course details

Whether you are already familiar with Grafana or a beginner, Systems Reliability Engineer (SRE) Opeyemi Onikute guides you through what you need to use Prometheus and Grafana to monitor and analyze applications in the real-world. Learn about Prometheus as a data source and explore all the tools you need to succeed with Grafana as a whole, including other data sources in the future. Beyond Grafana, find out how to create world-class dashboards as a whole.

Learning objectives
Create and manage dashboards in Grafana with Prometheus.
Understand how to create world-class dashboards beyond Grafana through study of dashboard structure and layout, presentation and design, and charting.
Learn to manage Grafana dashboards automatically using infrastructure-as-code.
Apply what you learn with practical examples in the real world.
Understand the fundamental building blocks of Grafana such as panels, annotations, and queries.

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Introduction to Prometheus and Grafana

1. Getting Started with Prometheus and Grafana

02 - Introduction to observability
03 - Introduction to dashboarding
04 - Grafana overview and features
05 - Prometheus overview
06 - Grafana user interface overview

2. Installation and Configuration

3. Building Blocks for Mastering Grafana

07 - Grafana data sources
08 - Grafana dashboards
09 - Grafana panels
10 - Grafana queries
11 - Grafana variables
12 - Grafana transformations
13 - Grafana annotations
14 - Grafana plugins

4. Grafana Panels

15 - Panel options
16 - Panel overrides
17 - The graph panel
18 - The stats panel
19 - The gauge panel
20 - The heatmap panel

5. How to Design Practical Dashboards

21 - Sample application
22 - Structure and layout
23 - Accessibility and presentation
24 - Choosing the right panels
25 - Naming and context

6. Alerts

26 - Grafana Alerts introduction
27 - Grafana Alerts states
28 - Grafana Alert rules
29 - Lab - Creating a simple alert

7. Generative AI and LLMs

30 - Introduction to generative AI
31 - How AI can help solve challenges in Grafana
32 - Grafana and LLMs - Current features
33 - The role of context awareness - RAG and MCPs
34 - Lab 1 - An LLM assistant for troubleshooting
35 - Lab 2 - Upgrading the assistant with MCP

8. Scaling Grafana Infrastructure with Terraform

36 - Introduction to IaC
37 - Grafana with Terraform overview
38 - Installing and configure the Grafana provider
39 - Defining a dashboard with Terraform

9. Grafana Administration

40 - The configuration files
41 - User and organization management
42 - Plugin management

Conclusion

43 - Next steps