77 lines
4.2 KiB
Markdown
77 lines
4.2 KiB
Markdown
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# Phase 5 — Dashboards and alerts as code
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*Part of `docs/roadmap/` — see [`intro.md`](intro.md) for platform/background context and [`summary.md`](summary.md) for how every phase fits together. Prev: [`phase-4.md`](phase-4.md) · Next: [`phase-6.md`](phase-6.md)*
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**Status:** Not started
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**Message:** Depends on Phases 2–4 producing traces, logs and metrics worth
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dashboarding.
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**Time-box:** 2 evenings. This is an explicit requirement from Babak: *destroy and
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recreate in seconds.*
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### Concepts
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- Three levels of "as code", and you should know when each applies:
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1. **File provisioning** — YAML in `provisioning/datasources/` and
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`provisioning/dashboards/`, plus dashboard JSON files mounted into the
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container. Grafana loads them at startup. Simplest, no state, no API tokens,
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perfect for a Compose demo. **This alone satisfies the requirement.**
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2. **Grafana Foundation SDK** — typed libraries (Go, **Python**, TypeScript, Java,
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PHP) that *generate* the dashboard JSON programmatically. Now a dashboard is a
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function: `red_dashboard("ledger")`, called seven times in a loop. Reviewable
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diffs, reusable panels, no 2000-line JSON blobs. Grafana now points here instead
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of Grafonnet (which is legacy and unofficial).
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3. **Terraform provider / Grafana Operator / Git Sync** — for state-managed,
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multi-environment, or GitOps setups. Overkill here; the right answer *later*,
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when this lands on your Kubernetes cluster.
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- **Dashboards should answer questions, not display data.** A good service dashboard
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answers, in order: is it up, is it serving, is it erroring, is it slow, and where
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is the pressure. Panels that nobody looks at during an incident are cost, not value.
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- **Alerts as code too.** Grafana alert rules, contact points and notification
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policies all provision from YAML. And keep the *alert definition* next to the
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dashboard that explains it.
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### Resources
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- Grafana docs → *Observability as code* (the index page — it lays out Foundation
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SDK, file provisioning, Git Sync and Terraform, and tells you which to use when).
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- Grafana Foundation SDK repo → the Python examples, especially the `red-method`
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example.
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- Udemy backbone: dashboard design sections (panel types, transformations,
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variables, dashboard best practice).
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### Build
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Your platform provisions **datasources only** — there is no dashboards provider at
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all. So this phase is entirely yours, and the right home for it is inside the
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Ansible role, using the same mechanism as everything else.
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1. **Extend the role.** Add
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`roles/observability/templates/grafana-stack/config/grafana/provisioning/dashboards/dashboards.yml.j2`
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(a file-based dashboard provider pointing at a mounted directory), a
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`config/grafana/dashboards/` directory for the JSON, and the tasks to template
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and copy them. The Compose template already mounts
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`./config/grafana/provisioning` read-only, so the provider is picked up on
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restart.
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2. **Generate the JSON from code**, don't hand-write it. Use the **Grafana
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Foundation SDK (Python)**: one function producing a RED dashboard for a given
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service name, looped over the seven services; a second producing a system
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overview (service graph, stream lag, pool saturation, error-budget burn). Commit
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the generator *and* its output; the Ansible role ships the output.
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3. **The demo is now `ansible-playbook`.** Delete every dashboard through the
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Grafana UI, re-run `playbooks/grafana-stack.yml`, and watch them all come back.
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That is a strictly stronger answer to Babak's "destroy and recreate in seconds"
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than a local Makefile target, because it's the same command that builds the
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platform.
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4. While you're in there, review the provisioned datasources and add what's missing:
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`tracesToMetrics` on Tempo (pointing at the Tempo-generated span metrics) is a
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worthwhile addition, and the existing `tracesToLogsV2` has no `tags` mapping —
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understand why `filterByTraceID: true` alone is sufficient here, and when it
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wouldn't be.
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5. Add alert rules — see Phase 7 for the Alertmanager-vs-Grafana-alerting choice.
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**Done when:** re-running the playbook restores every dashboard from scratch, and no
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dashboard has ever been saved through the Grafana UI.
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