Getting started with Grafana and InfluxDB

    Use the instructions in to:

    • Install Grafana.
    • Log in to Grafana.
    • Create your first dashboard.

    Step 2. Get InfluxDB

    You can and install it locally or you can sign up for InfluxDB Cloud. Windows installers are not available for some versions of InfluxDB.

    Install Telegraf. This tool is an agent that helps you get metrics into InfluxDB. For more information, refer to .

    If you chose to use InfluxDB Cloud, then you should download and install the InfluxDB Cloud CLI. This tool allows you to send command line instructions to your cloud account. For more information, refer to .

    Step 4. Get data into InfluxDB

    If you downloaded and installed InfluxDB on your local machine, then use the feature to visualize InfluxDB metrics.

    If you are using the cloud account, then the wizards will guide you through the initial process. For more information, refer to Configure Telegraf.

    You can have more than one InfluxDB data source defined in Grafana.

    1. Follow the general instructions to .
    2. Decide if you will use InfluxQL or Flux as your query language.
      • For InfluxQL, refer to InfluxDB data source for information about specific data source fields.
      • For Flux, refer to for information about specific data source fields.

    InfluxDB publishes guidance for connecting different versions of their product to Grafana.

    • InfluxDB OSS or Enterprise 1.8+. To turn on Flux, refer to . Select your InfluxDB version in the upper right corner.
    • InfluxDB OSS or Enterprise 2.x. Refer to Use Grafana with InfluxDB. Select your InfluxDB version in the upper right corner.
    • InfluxDB Cloud. Refer to .
    • Make sure your Grafana token has read access. If it doesn’t, then you’ll get an authentication error and be unable to connect Grafana to InfluxDB.
    • Avoid apostrophes and other non-standard characters in bucket and token names.
    • If you change your bucket name in InfluxDB, then you must also change it in Grafana and your Telegraf .conf file as well.

    Step 6. Add a query

    This step varies depending on the query language that you selected when you set up your data source in Grafana.

    In the query editor, click select measurement.

    Grafana displays a list of possible series. Click one to select it, and Grafana graphs any available data. If there is no data to display, then try another selection or check your data source.

    Create a simple Flux query.

    1. Add a panel.
    2. In the query editor, select your InfluxDB-Flux data source. For more information, refer to .
    3. Select the Table visualization.
    4. In the query editor text field, enter and then click outside of the query editor.

    This generic query returns a list of buckets.

    1. In your browser, log in to the InfluxDB native UI (OSS is typically something like http://localhost:8086 or for InfluxDB Cloud use: ).

    2. Click Explore to open the Data Explorer.

    3. The InfluxDB Data Explorer provides two mechanisms for creating Flux queries: a graphical query editor and a script editor. Using the graphical query editor, create a query. It will look something like this:

    4. Click Script Editor to view the text of the query, and then copy all the lines of your Flux code, which will look something like this:

    5. In Grafana, and then paste your Flux code into the query editor.

    6. Click Apply. Your new panel should be visible with data from your Flux query.

    In your Grafana instance, go to the view and build queries to experiment with the metrics you want to monitor. Here you can also debug issues related to collecting metrics.

    Step 8. Start building dashboards

    Here are some resources to learn more:

    • Grafana documentation: