Files
grafana/docs/sources/guides/whats-new-in-v3.md
Torkel Ödegaard 96008c9738 Squashed commit of the following:
commit 4113ed00782590187d19dd2f8cbae683f164142c
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel.odegaard@gmail.com>
Date:   Fri Oct 21 10:47:35 2016 +0200

    docs(): minor fix for docs index page

commit 45478d120571519462fac905aadeab5954696690
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel.odegaard@gmail.com>
Date:   Thu Oct 20 14:28:21 2016 +0200

    updated

commit c9c1c1d5a462f85e8001a45218f24102583d7aee
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel.odegaard@gmail.com>
Date:   Thu Oct 20 14:27:34 2016 +0200

    docs(): updated image refs

commit 5fa0f27963968d77bbbbb7edd973847ea72135e3
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel.odegaard@gmail.com>
Date:   Wed Oct 19 14:33:04 2016 +0200

    docs is almost done

commit 6b988c90cb08563e2c27212338c2947e69f6fcc3
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel.odegaard@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue Oct 18 20:45:28 2016 +0200

    almost done

commit 17757c21ed813892ddb1f289f2e52613caf7bcef
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel@grafana.org>
Date:   Tue Oct 18 16:45:48 2016 +0200

    making progress on docs

commit f06c815991dd81b8893912a6da04a17b80b63fda
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel.odegaard@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue Oct 18 14:30:55 2016 +0200

    progress on new docs

commit 5197237426252623de2d8b9cc22ddbbdbb240763
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel.odegaard@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue Oct 18 13:25:26 2016 +0200

    making progress

commit 33e2b6b617f16f65878141cf11e54b2817a2ea96
Merge: de385e5 ecb4a99
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel.odegaard@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue Oct 18 12:17:58 2016 +0200

    Merge branch 'new-docs' of github.com:grafana/grafana into new-docs

commit ecb4a99dd54aa39f17d9bf4d7e132a389812f8fd
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel@grafana.org>
Date:   Tue Oct 18 10:39:59 2016 +0200

    keep urls for now

commit de385e56d86b071cf2150ccf9f1aa06ec5187277
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel.odegaard@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon Oct 17 17:56:18 2016 +0200

    more progress

commit 8469ebc239ab2316cbbc01862e5026737f272f00
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel.odegaard@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon Oct 17 17:08:06 2016 +0200

    progress on new docs

commit e755f656b12534cfcb23bad11f1fa696e43f7428
Merge: 4644a35 35cce3b
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel.odegaard@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon Oct 17 12:21:27 2016 +0200

    Merge branch 'new-docs' of github.com:grafana/grafana into new-docs

commit 4644a35102555204787e91041b50dcbfe0f7a213
Merge: 25c4bef 977cdd5
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel.odegaard@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon Oct 17 12:21:11 2016 +0200

    Merge branch 'master' of github.com:grafana/grafana into new-docs

commit 35cce3bef802fac020a53693b02c112a91a096fc
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel@grafana.org>
Date:   Mon Oct 17 09:31:17 2016 +0200

    progress on #6170

commit 25c4bef629de7d77218ba95cc3bd25fb50bb19d6
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel.odegaard@gmail.com>
Date:   Sun Oct 16 15:05:30 2016 +0200

    fix for osx

commit 6c6b52f975630be87da23dd51beafaecb820cec2
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel@grafana.org>
Date:   Sun Oct 16 12:56:39 2016 +0200

    progress on new docs

commit 6a09633981ab26191d5542dbe3a788846ac6b73d
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel@grafana.org>
Date:   Sat Oct 15 11:39:49 2016 +0200

    progress on new docs

commit 7d533fbc23e41b86fd1ba9c955dd17ae1ad977e5
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel@grafana.org>
Date:   Mon Oct 10 09:25:12 2016 +0200

    making progress on new docs site

commit 50392ce98edfa201977716e92e4a86f9d48ae386
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel@grafana.org>
Date:   Sun Oct 9 20:02:28 2016 +0200

    feat(new docs): progress on new docs site

commit 81a3d3d0952d3a5d790412e90d01ac5a247e0686
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel@grafana.org>
Date:   Fri Oct 7 07:52:11 2016 +0200

    new docs site experiment

commit 704adc98664665b3624087ab38ce29fc9da005f1
Author: Torkel Ödegaard <torkel@grafana.org>
Date:   Sat Oct 1 20:46:53 2016 +0200

    new docs poc
2016-10-21 11:01:34 +02:00

8.5 KiB
Raw Blame History

+++ title = "What's New in Grafana v3.0" description = "Feature & improvement highlights for Grafana v3.0" keywords = ["grafana", "new", "documentation", "3.0"] type = "docs" [menu.docs] name = "Version 3.0" identifier = "v3.0" parent = "whatsnew" weight = 2 +++

What's New in Grafana v3.0

Commercial Support

Commercial Support subscriptions for Grafana are now generally available.

Raintank is committed to a 100% open-source strategy for Grafana. We do not want to go down the “open core” route. If your organization finds Grafana valuable, please consider purchasing a subscription. Get direct support, bug fixes, and training from the core Grafana team.

Plugins

With the popularity of Grafana continuing to accelerate, it has been challenging to keep up with all the requests for new features, new panels, new data sources, and new functionality. Saying “no” so often has been frustrating, especially for an open source project with such a vibrant community.

The team felt that it was time to dramatically improve extensibility through plugin support. Grafana 3.0 comes with a completely revamped plugin SDK / API.

Weve refactored our Data Source plugin architecture and added two new plugin types:

  • Panel plugins let you add new panel types for your Dashboards.
  • App plugins bundle Panels plugins, Data Sources plugins, Dashboards, and Grafana Pages. Apps are a great way to provide an entire experience right within Grafana.

Grafana.net

Grafana.net offers a central repository where the community can come together to discover, create and share plugins (data sources, panels, apps) and dashboards.

We are also working on a hosted Graphite-compatible data source that will be optimized for use with Grafana. Itll be easy to combine your existing data source(s) with this OpenSaaS option. Finally, Grafana.net can also be a hub to manage all your Grafana instances. Youll be able to monitor their health and availability, perform dashboard backups, and more.

We are also working on a hosted Graphite-compatible Data Source that will be optimized for use with Grafana. Itll be easy to combine your existing Data Source(s) with this OpenSaaS option.

Finally, Grafana.net will also be a hub to manage all your Grafana instances. Youll be able to monitor their health and availability, perform Dashboard backups, and more.

Grafana.net will officially launch along with the stable version of Grafana 3.0, but check out the preview and sign up for an account in the meantime.

grafana-cli

Grafana 3.0 comes with a new command line tool called grafana-cli. You can easily install plugins from Grafana.net with it. For example:

grafana-cli install grafana-pie-chart-panel

Personalization & Preferences

The home dashboard, timezone and theme can now be customized on Organization and user Profile level. Grafana can also track recently viewed dashboards, which can then be displayed in the dashboard list panel.

Improved Playlists

You can now save Playlists, and start them by using a Playlist URL. If you update a running Playlist, it will update after its next cycle.

This is powerful as it allows you to remote control Grafana. If you have a big TV display showing Grafana in your company lobby, create a playlist named Lobby, and start it on the computer connected to the Lobby TV.

You can now change the Lobby playlist and have the dashboards shown in the Lobby update accordingly, automatically.

The playlist does not even have to contain multiple Dashboards; you can use this feature to reload the whole Dashboard (and Grafana) periodically and remotely.

You can also make Playlists dynamic by using Dashboard tags to define the Playlist.

Improved UI

Weve always tried to focus on a good looking, usable, and responsive UI. Weve continued to pay a lot of attention to these areas in this release.

Grafana 3.0 has a dramatically updated UI that not only looks better but also has a number of usability improvements. The side menu now works as a dropdown that you can pin to the side. The Organization / Profile / Sign out side menu links have been combined into an on hover slide out menu.

In addition, all the forms and the layouts of all pages have been updated to look and flow better, and be much more consistent. There are literally hundreds of UI improvements and refinements.

Heres the new side menu in action:

And here's the new look for Dashboard settings:

Check out the Play Site to get a feel for some of the UI changes.

Improved Annotations

It is now possible to define a link in each annotation. You can hover over the link and click the annotation text. This feature is very useful for linking to particular commits or tickets where more detailed information can be presented to the user.

Data source variables

This has been a top requested feature for very long we are exited to finally provide this feature. You can now add a new Data source type variable. That will automatically be filled with instance names of your data sources.

You can then use this variable as the panel data source:

This will allow you to quickly change data source server and reuse the same dashboard for different instances of your metrics backend. For example you might have Graphite running in multiple data centers or environments.

Prometheus, InfluxDB, and OpenTSDB improvements

All three of these popular included Data Sources have seen a variety of improvements in this release. Here are some highlights:

Prometheus

The Prometheus Data Source now supports annotations.

InfluxDB

You can now select the InfluxDB policy from the query editor.

Grafana 3.0 also comes with support for InfluxDB 0.11 and InfluxDB 0.12.

OpenTSDB

OpenTSDB 2.2 is better supported and now supports millisecond precision.

Breaking changes

Dashboards from v2.6 are compatible; no manual updates should be necessary. There could be some edge case scenarios where dashboards using templating could stop working. If that is the case just enter the edit view for the template variable and hit Update button. This is due to a simplification of the variable format system where template variables are now stored without any formatting (glob/regex/etc), this is done on the fly when the variable is interpolated.

  • Plugin API: The plugin API has changed so if you are using a custom data source (or panel) they need to be updated as well.

  • InfluxDB 0.8: This data source is no longer included in releases, you can still install manually from Grafana.net

  • KairosDB: This data source has also no longer shipped with Grafana, you can install it manually from Grafana.net

Plugin showcase

Discovering and installing plugins is very quick and easy with Grafana 3.0 and Grafana.net. Here are a couple that I incurage you try!

Clock Panel

Support's both current time and count down mode.

Pie Chart Panel

A simple pie chart panel is now available as an external plugin.

WorldPing App

This is full blown Grafana App that adds new panels, data sources and pages to give feature rich global performance monitoring directly from your on-prem Grafana.

Zabbix App

This app contains the already very pouplar Zabbix data source plugin, 2 dashboards and a triggers panel. It is created and maintained by Alexander Zobnin.

Checkout the full list of plugins on Grafana.net

CHANGELOG

For a detailed list and link to github issues for everything included in the 3.0 release please view the CHANGELOG.md file.