DARK

Dashboards As Resources in Kubernetes.

DARK provides a way to define and deploy Grafana dashboards via Kubernetes, next to the services they monitor.

If you are looking for a way to version your dashboards and deploy them across all environments, like you would do with your services, then this project is meant for you.

Design goals

full description of dashboards via YAML
compatibility with kubectl
seamless integration with Grafana
delegate YAML decoding and dashboard generation to Grabana

Setup

Note: review these manifests to ensure that they fit your cluster's configuration.

Setup the CRD:

kubectl apply -f k8s/crd.yaml

Create a secret to store Grafana's API token (with editor access level):

kubectl create secret generic dark-tokens --from-literal=grafana=TOKEN_HERE

Deploy DARK's controller:

kubectl apply -f k8s/deployment.yaml

Dashboard definition

Define a dashboard:

# k8s/example-dashboard.yml
apiVersion: k8s.kevingomez.fr/v1
kind: GrafanaDashboard

metadata:
  # must be unique across dashboards
  name: example-dashboard

folder: "Awesome folder"
spec:
  title: Awesome dashboard

  shared_crosshair: true
  tags: [generated, yaml]
  auto_refresh: 10s

  rows:
    - name: Prometheus
      panels:
        - graph:
            title: HTTP Rate
            height: 400px
            datasource: prometheus-default
            targets:
              - prometheus:
                  query: "rate(promhttp_metric_handler_requests_total[$interval])"
                  legend: "{{handler}} - {{ code }}"
        - graph:
            title: Heap allocations
            height: 400px
            datasource: prometheus-default
            targets:
              - prometheus:
                  query: "go_memstats_heap_alloc_bytes"
                  legend: "{{job}}"

For more information on the YAML schema used to describe dashboards, see Grabana.

Apply the configuration:

kubectl apply -f k8s/example-dashboard.yml

And verify that the dashboard was created:

kubectl get dashboards
kubectl get events | grep dark

Converting Grafana JSON dashboard to YAML

To ease the transition from existing, raw Grafana dashboards to DARK, a converter is provided. It takes the path to a JSON dashboard and a path for the destination YAML file.

docker run --rm -it -v $(pwd):/workspace kphoen/dark-converter:latest dashboard.json converted-dashboard.yaml

License