Grafana Cheat Sheet

Updated 2026-04-28

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Grafana is an open-source analytics and visualization platform that transforms metrics, logs, and traces from multiple data sources into interactive dashboards and graphs. With over 35 million users worldwide, Grafana has become the de facto standard for observability visualization, supporting 150+ data source integrations including Prometheus, Loki, InfluxDB, Elasticsearch, and cloud provider services. Grafana 13 (released April 2026 at GrafanaCON in Barcelona) introduced dynamic dashboards as generally available—with tabs, auto-grid layouts, and conditional rendering—alongside Git Sync GA for observability as code, the Grafana Advisor health-check tool, and Grafana Assistant AI access for all editions including OSS. Its core strength remains unified visualization: one dashboard can seamlessly combine metrics, logs, traces, and profiles across cloud providers and on-premise systems without switching tools.

What This Cheat Sheet Covers

This topic spans 18 focused tables and 198 indexed concepts. Below is a complete table-by-table outline of this topic, spanning foundational concepts through advanced details.

Table 1: Core Dashboard ComponentsTable 2: Data SourcesTable 3: Visualization TypesTable 4: Query Languages and ExpressionsTable 5: Variables and TemplatingTable 6: TransformationsTable 7: Alerting ComponentsTable 8: Panel ConfigurationTable 9: Time ControlsTable 10: Dashboard FeaturesTable 11: Explore Mode and Drilldown AppsTable 12: Provisioning and Configuration as CodeTable 13: Authentication and Access ControlTable 14: Plugins and ExtensionsTable 15: Performance and OptimizationTable 16: Cloud and Enterprise FeaturesTable 17: AI Features and Grafana AssistantTable 18: Migration and Legacy

Table 1: Core Dashboard Components

Component	Example	Description
Dashboard	`New Dashboard → Add Panel → Query`	• Top-level container for panels • supports variables, time ranges, and refresh intervals for dynamic data exploration.
Panel	`Time Series panel with PromQL query`	• Individual visualization unit combining a query and visualization type • basic building block of all dashboards.
Query	`rate(http_requests_total[5m])`	• Data retrieval expression using data source-specific syntax (PromQL, LogQL, SQL) • can combine multiple queries per panel.
Transformation	`Merge`, `Group by`, `Filter by value`	• Data manipulation applied after query execution • reshapes, joins, calculates, or filters results before visualization.
Variable	`$namespace`, `$server`, `$interval`	• Dynamic placeholder that creates dropdown selectors • makes dashboards reusable across environments and resources.
Row	Collapsible section grouping panels	• Organizational container for panels • can repeat based on variable values for dynamic dashboard sections.

Table 1: Core Dashboard Components

Component	Example	Description
Dashboard	`New Dashboard → Add Panel → Query`	• Top-level container for panels • supports variables, time ranges, and refresh intervals for dynamic data exploration.
Panel	`Time Series panel with PromQL query`	• Individual visualization unit combining a query and visualization type • basic building block of all dashboards.
Query	`rate(http_requests_total[5m])`	• Data retrieval expression using data source-specific syntax (PromQL, LogQL, SQL) • can combine multiple queries per panel.
Transformation	`Merge`, `Group by`, `Filter by value`	• Data manipulation applied after query execution • reshapes, joins, calculates, or filters results before visualization.
Variable	`$namespace`, `$server`, `$interval`	• Dynamic placeholder that creates dropdown selectors • makes dashboards reusable across environments and resources.
Row	Collapsible section grouping panels	• Organizational container for panels • can repeat based on variable values for dynamic dashboard sections.