Grafana is a popular technology that makes it easy to visualize logs and metrics. The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Logs Data Source for Grafana is used to extend Grafana by adding OCI Logging as a data source. The plugin enables you to visualize log records (service, audit, and custom) and metrics derived from log records stored in the OCI Logging service.
This walkthrough is intended for use by people who would like to deploy Grafana and the OCI Logs Data Source for Grafana on a virtual machine in OCI.
Make sure you have access to the Logging Service and that the logs you want to observe and analyze are being collected in your tenancy. See the OCI Logging documentation for information on how to collect or access:
Provision an Oracle Linux virtual machine in OCI connected to a Virtual Cloud Network with access to the public internet. If you do not already have access to a Virtual Cloud Network with access to the public internet you can navigate to Virtual Cloud Networks under Networking and click Create Virtual Cloud Network. Choosing the CREATE VIRTUAL CLOUD NETWORK PLUS RELATED RESOURCES option will result in a VCN with an Internet Routing Gateway and Route Tables configured for access to the public internet. Three subnets will be created: one in each availability domain in the region.
After creating your VM, the next step is to create a dynamic group used to group virtual machine or bare metal compute instances as “principals” (similar to user groups).
Next, create a policy, for example named “grafana_policy”, in the root compartment of your tenancy to permit instances in the dynamic group to make API calls against Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services. Add the following policy statements:
-
allow dynamicgroup grafana to read log-groups in tenancy -
allow dynamicgroup grafana to read log-content in tenancy -
allow dynamicgroup grafana to read compartments in tenancy -
allow dynamicgroup grafana to read audit-events in tenancy
The first two policies can also be limited to specific compartments in your tenancy by adding additional qualifiers to the policy statements.
To install the OCI Logs data source make sure you are running Grafana 8.0 or later. Use the grafana-cli tool to install the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Logs Data Source for Grafana from the command line:
grafana-cli plugins install oci-logs-datasource
The plugin will be installed into your Grafana plugins directory, which by default is located at /var/lib/grafana/plugins. Here is more information on the CLI tool.
Alternatively, you can manually download the .tar file and unpack it into your /grafana/plugins directory. To do so, change to the Grafana plugins directory: cd /usr/local/var/lib/grafana/plugins. Download the OCI Logs Grafana Plugin: wget https://github.com/oracle/oci-grafana-logs/releases/latest/download/plugin.tar. Create a directory and install the plugin: mkdir oci && tar -C oci -xvf plugin.tar and then remove the tarball: rm plugin.tar.
Additional step for Grafana 8. Open the grafana configuration grafana.ini file and add the
allow_loading_unsigned_plugins = "oci-logs-datasource"in the plugins section.
Example
[plugins]
;enable_alpha = false
;app_tls_skip_verify_insecure = false
allow_loading_unsigned_plugins = "oci-logs-datasource"
To start the Grafana server, run: sudo systemctl start grafana-server.
You can use a manual configuration or a programatic configuration. In case you want to use the datasource.yaml based plugin configuration you can refers to this document: Data source configuration using yaml file For manual approach continue to read this document.
The next step is to configure the plugin. To find the IP address of the newly-created instance, navigate to Compute > Instances > [Your Instance]. The Public IP address is listed under the Primary VNIC Information section. Connect to Grafana via port forward by running ssh opc@[Instance Public IP] -L 3000:localhost:3000.
Navigate to the Grafana homepage at http://localhost:3000.
Log in with the default username admin and the password admin. You will be prompted to change your password. Click Skip or Save to continue.
On the Home Dashboard click the gear icon on the left side of the page and then select Data sources from the Configuration menu.
Click Add data source.
In the search box at the top of the resulting page, enter 'oracle'.
Click the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Logs box to select it as your data source type.
On the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Logs data source configuration page, fill in your Tenancy OCID, Default Region, and Authentication Provider. Your Default region is the same as your home region listed in the Tenancy Details page. For Authentication Provider choose OCI Instance.
Click Save & Test to return to the home dashboard.
Check out how to use the newly installed and configured plugin in our Using Grafana with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Source walkthrough.