Grafana Cheat Sheet

Reference for Grafana dashboard JSON, data source provisioning, panel queries, and alerting configuration for visualizing metrics.

2 PagesIntermediateFeb 15, 2026

Data Source Provisioning

YAML file provisioning a Prometheus data source on startup.

yaml

apiVersion: 1datasources:  - name: Prometheus    type: prometheus    access: proxy    url: http://prometheus:9090    isDefault: true    editable: false

Dashboard Provisioning

Auto-load dashboard JSON files from a directory.

yaml

apiVersion: 1providers:  - name: 'default'    orgId: 1    folder: ''    type: file    options:      path: /var/lib/grafana/dashboards

Key Concepts

Core Grafana building blocks.

data source- Connection to a backend (Prometheus, Loki, InfluxDB, MySQL) that panels query
panel- A single visualization (graph, table, gauge, stat) bound to a query
dashboard variable- Templated input (e.g. $instance) letting users filter panels dynamically
alert rule- Condition evaluated on a query result that triggers notifications
contact point- Destination (Slack, email, PagerDuty) that receives firing alerts
folder- Organizational grouping of dashboards with shared permissions

grafana-cli & HTTP API

Managing plugins and dashboards via CLI/API.

bash

grafana-cli plugins install grafana-piechart-panelgrafana-cli plugins ls# Create/update a dashboard via HTTP APIcurl -X POST http://admin:admin@localhost:3000/api/dashboards/db \  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \  -d @dashboard.json

Pro Tip

Store dashboards as JSON in version control and load them via the file provisioner rather than editing in the UI — this makes dashboard changes reviewable and reproducible across environments.

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