Use Grafana to query and visualize data

Use Grafana to query and visualize data stored in InfluxDB Cloud Serverless. Install the grafana-flight-sql-plugin to query InfluxDB with the Flight SQL protocol.

[Grafana] enables you to query, visualize, alert on, and explore your metrics, logs, and traces wherever they are stored. [Grafana] provides you with tools to turn your time-series database (TSDB) data into insightful graphs and visualizations.

– Grafana documentation

• Install Grafana or login to Grafana Cloud
• Install the FlightSQL plugin
  • Use grafana-cli
  • Use the Grafana UI
• Create and configure a FlightSQL datasource
• Query InfluxDB with Grafana
• Build visualizations with Grafana

Install Grafana or login to Grafana Cloud

If using the open source version of Grafana, follow the Grafana installation instructions to install Grafana for your operating system. If using Grafana Cloud, login to your Grafana Cloud instance.

Install the FlightSQL plugin

grafana-cli plugins install influxdata-flightsql-datasource

Create and configure a FlightSQL datasource

1. In your Grafana user interface (UI), navigate to Data Sources.

2. Click Add new data source.

3. Search for and select the FlightSQL plugin.

4. Provide a name for your datasource.

5. Add your connection credentials:

   • Host: Provide the host and port of your Flight SQL client. For InfluxDB Cloud Serverless, this is your InfluxDB Cloud Serverless region domain and port 443. For example:

     us-east-1-1.aws.cloud2.influxdata.com:443
     

   • AuthType: Select token.

   • Token: Provide your InfluxDB API token with read access to the buckets you want to query.

   • Require TLS/SSL: Enable this toggle.

6. Add connection MetaData. InfluxDB Cloud Serverless requires one of the following key-value pairs:

   • Key: database, Value: Bucket name
   • Key: bucket-id, Value: Bucket ID

7. Click Save & test.

   

   If successful, click Explore to begin querying InfluxDB with Flight SQL and Grafana.

Query InfluxDB with Grafana

After you configure and save a FlightSQL datasource, use Grafana to build, run, and inspect queries against InfluxDB buckets.

1. Click Explore.
2. In the dropdown, select the saved data source that you want to query.
3. Use the SQL query form to build your query:
   • FROM: Select the measurement that you want to query.
   • SELECT: Select one or more fields and tags to return as columns in query results. In Grafana, you must specify a time column in the SELECT list.
   • WHERE: To filter the query results, enter a conditional expression.
   • GROUP BY: To GROUP BY one or more fields or tags, enter them as a comma-delimited list. If you include an aggregate function in the SELECT list, then you must include one or more of the queried columns in a GROUP BY or PARTITION BY clause. SQL will return the aggregation for each group or partition.
4. Click Run query to execute the query.

To learn about query management and inspection in Grafana, see the Grafana Explore documentation.

Build visualizations with Grafana

For a comprehensive walk-through of creating visualizations with Grafana, see the Grafana documentation.