Grafana Reviews

We used Grafana to monitor our traffic.

The best feature was the creation of graphs and trends to know if the traffic was low or okay. We could create week-over-week traffic and trend analysis as well. All these features were good and were the only features I used.

If there was an issue on one node, we couldn't drill down and see all the issues on other nodes or see if there were interlinked issues. However, Datadog allowed us to do this. In Datadog, we could take our complete environment and see what nodes went down simultaneously and the cause. For example, Datadog allows you to see in the graphs whether the database is locked or if there was a firewall issue. However, in Grafana, we had to add everything into a single dashboard manually.

In the next release, there should be more of a colour palette. The colour palette in Grafana is limited, and it chooses its own. We used hundreds of services to monitor into a single graph, so in the stacked chart, it chose the colour needs, and when we wanted to change it, there were only four or five options.

I used this solution when I worked for Expedia. We used the solution for about three years.

There were no breakdowns or hiccups.

I am unaware of the scalability. There were around 500 users when I worked there. The network team was using it on a large scale.

I don't believe that Grafana fulfilled the requirements completely. That's why we moved to Datadog.

I was not involved in the initial setup. We had a password issue at a point, but I am unsure if that was an issue with the solution or just within the organization.

Grafana was not an open source, and we had to pay for a license to use it. The same was the case with CashPoint. There was a license, but I'm unaware of how much we were paying.

I believe my old company chose Grafana because they initially wanted to monitor the traffic and know the firewall and scaling.

I rate Grafana a six out of ten because Grafana has limited options compared to Datadog. Regarding advice, it was pretty simple to use Grafana. The trickiest part was creating a new dashboard, working on the query and adding the requirement. So you have to have the source and path handy to put that in the query. Any user can use Grafana once they understand what the dashboards are doing and what data is being searched from those dashboards.

I use Grafana since it is interconnected with Zabbix. I also use Grafana for the dashboard of machines from VMware and for some network devices connected to Zabbix.

The ability to use Grafana with Zabbix is a valuable feature for me. Zabbix provides me with alerts and information if something goes wrong, while Grafana offers a better dashboard that is more stable. If you know Grafana well, it can show you everything, like the uptime of different sources and other areas.

I have a problem with Grafana in the area of documentation. There is a problem in the area of some graphs where you connect elements. With Grafana, there is only one name that can be included for ten hours. In Grafana, only one big field with one text name is shown in the documentation. When it comes to production, it is only for a period of time that some fields on each side give the information they have. I researched on Google and other forums and saw that people face problems when they can't connect a field with the same value. The aforementioned area in the tool needs improvement.

I have been using Grafana for nine months. I am a customer of the product.

I have always had a stable version of the product. In general, I have not had any issues with the product.

The technical personnel in my company use the tool, and it is possible to add or delete devices and other statuses in the solution. Around five people in my company use the product.

I have always used the online forums or the internet to find information related to the product. I have not contacted the tool's technical support.

The product's initial setup phase was very easy.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

For me, Grafana is a cheap tool because I don't have to spend much time learning the product since it is a simple solution. I don't know if there are different paid versions of the product.

My company chose Grafana over other products in the market considering its integration capabilities with Zabbix, good documentation, and the many topics about the tool that are available on the internet.

I would suggest Grafana to those who use Zabbix because it helps users get a lot of information on networks and resolve a lot of problems.

I could do everything in Grafana with the help of graphs and documentation and get information on different types of devices.

I rate the overall tool an eight to nine out of ten.

We use the tool to monitor metrics on dashboards. 

It's easy to make changes. We can put many dashboards in one place. There's no delay in showing data - what you see on Grafana matches the server metrics.

Grafana could improve by having its own query language. Currently, it uses languages like Prometheus or InfluxDB, which not everyone knows. Their query language should be easier.

I have been using the product for four years. 

Stability-wise, our on-premises version was mixed, but the cloud version is stable.

My company has 2000 users. 

Setting up Grafana is moderately difficult, especially writing query languages and custom metrics. Creating custom metrics requires writing new query language at the server level, which can be challenging.

If you want to use Grafana for the first time, I'd say you can. It's cost-effective compared to other products like Datadog. But if cost isn't an issue, I'd recommend Datadog. For beginners, learning to use Grafana is moderately difficult. I rate it a seven out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for site visibility.

It helps us monitor our applications and their performance, including CPU.

The heat maps are great.

We like the dashboards on offer. 

It's a stable product.

The solution can scale well.

Pricing isn't overly expensive.

Technical support is good. 

I cannot think of any specific issues we've had.

We'd like an enhancement of legends and labels in the UI. The formatting could be better. 

I've been using the solution for two years. I haven't used it for too long just yet. 

I'd rate the stability eight out of ten. There aren't bugs or glitches that I have noticed. It doesn't crash or freeze. I find it to be reliable. 

I'd rate the scalability eight out of ten. It can extend well. 

We had 50 or more people using it in my previous organization. 

Technical support is fine. They have been helpful and responsive. 

Positive

I'm not sure if it is easy to set up the solution. I did not handle the deployment. 

I have not looked into the ROI.

The pricing is moderate. It is neither too expensive nor overly cheap. 

I am using the latest version of the solution. 

As a cloud solution, it is very good. Many organizations are going to the cloud, and Grafana is the best way to monitor those cloud environments.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It is a good solution. 

We have a few use cases. We have charts for infrastructure, CPU usage, etc. We have included a lot of metrics for WAFs. We also have some customer metrics and business metrics, such as any number of transactions for a specific action happening on the site. 

It gives us the visibility we need. I like that when we add deployment markers or release markers, we know exactly when an issue arises. For instance, if there is an increased usage of CPU, we can link it directly to the deployment that might have caused the issue. It increases productivity and observability. We can now easily tell when a certain issue arises. It's way easier to debug because it can point you to certain things based on these markers, and we can debug easier.

It's difficult to see the trends on the graph when the range is too long. 

At the company, they'd been using Grafana since I joined. It has been about three years.

It has been working fine for us.

With our workload, it's working fine. Going by that, I'd rate it a 10 out of 10, but I don't know about the other cases.

I've not contacted them.

I don't know if it's the same, but we were using CloudWatch in AWS.

Honeycomb is also similar to this. With all the metrics and performances, you can build dashboards, but I'm new to it.

Our team has two people who are in charge of that, but I'm not aware of its implementation.  

I don't have much experience with other tools, but for my specific case, it has been working great. I'd rate it a 10 out of 10.

We're getting the data from the CA team to Grafana, just feeding the data here from there. I used to create the standard dashboards and the custom dashboards based on the user's request.

We use the product in a logistics project where I used it for creating the dashboard for the packages and delivery kind of logistics projects.

There are multiple data fields we can create and graph models and gauge models. There are multiple kinds of models there to create dashboards, which is quite useful. 

The solution is stable.

Support is helpful.

I don't have any notes for improvement. 

There are some areas of network drives that are not showing as expected based on server usage. On the server, it was showing in GB model. However, in Grafana, It is in bytes. Therefore, the calculation it was not showing correctly. That is something that needs to be changed by the vendor team. 

The initial setup is not necessarily straightforward.

I've been using the solution for two and a half years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There aren't bugs. It's not glutchy. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The product works for monitoring as well, including log monitoring, monitoring, and alerting. However, we are using just the dashboard. Therefore, I cannot give my view on whether it is scalable or not.

We have about seven admins and 20 users on the solution. 

As Grafana is involved with the DX APM, we used to reach out to the vendor about any issues on the Grafana related to the DX APM. They had good expertise on Grafana and helped us a lot.

I've used other solutions. Grafana graph in representation is more clear for users. They like the view better. Any application has performance issues. We can set up the thresholds on the dashboard to 90% critical and 80% as warnings. We can update those values in the dashboards if we want. It is very colorful with multiple colors to differentiate things. It's just easier to use than anything else.

The initial setup isn't straightforward. Users need to learn the product first. At that point, it becomes easier. 

There isn't really a deployment so much as a one-time integration from the APM for Grafana.

Whenever we create a new agent or an existing agent is used to create the dashboard in Grafana, it normally takes one or two hours to create one dashboard. One dashboard means it has multiple panels like CPU, memory, and application back and front end.

There are a lot of panels. If the user request has very minimal panels, then it takes just 30 minutes to an hour. If they need multiple panels and multiple windows for the graph on a dashboard, then it takes two to three hours to complete it.

Once it is set up, the solution is easy to maintain. 

I handled the deployment myself. 

I was involved in the Broadcom DX APM. I did some POCs and created the dashboard. 

There is a feature called DX Dashboards there. It was used in the Lucene queries, and the dashboards are very innovative, and users like it a lot based on the dashboards.

We're using the solution that's the latest version. 

If a potential customer is already into any other dashboard view, I would advise them to create one free license and create dashboards and observe how it looks compared to their existing dashboard. That way, they'd be able to compare and see which would be better for them.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I use Grafana's multiple dashboards for throughput for real-time analysis of monitoring, checking creds and authentication requests, and monitoring the time between direct services.

Grafana's best features are live monitoring and alerts.

In order to enable Grafana, you need another tool called Prometheus, which loads data to it. It would be helpful if Grafana provided more information and training on how to use Prometheus. In the next release, Grafana should include API monitoring.

I've been using Grafana for two years.

Grafana is stable.

Grafana is scalable and can be implemented in multiple environments.

The initial setup is fairly straightforward, and Grafana is easy to configure.

I would give Grafana a rating of seven out of ten.

We use Grafana to visualize IT infrastructure monitoring data. We have real-time, historical, and trend data that we can visualize in a flexible manner using Grafana. We use Zabbix to collect, process, and store the data. Zabbix has its own inbuilt visualization widgets, dashboards, and graphs, however, Grafana adds more flexibility. We have integrated Zabbix with Grafana using the Zabbix API which gives access to almost all components of the Zabbix Software.

Our environment is on-premises so we have both Zabbix and Grafana locally installed.

Grafana has greatly improved the way we visualize monitoring data. Now, every team member from directors, managers, sales representatives, to technical engineers can be granted access to custom dashboards relevant to their line of work.

With the latest Grafana versions, reports can be generated from dashboards to update senior management officers. 

The dashboards are not only intuitive and insightful, but they are also beautiful so it makes monitoring and data visualization more enjoyable.

Since it can easily be integrated with other software, having that important part of data processing taken care of makes technical teams more focused on improving data sources and enriching the data.

The ability to create almost all kinds of graphs and visualize any kind of information in an appealing way is extremely useful to us.

The customizability of dashboards and widgets is impressive.

The flexibility in integration with other tools as data sources of data enriching tools has been great.

It is open-source, so it saves a lot on costs and the community is friendly and powerful.

The product can be used to cater to multiple use cases. Almost any kind of visualization is possible with Grafana and all dashboards are configurable.

The ability to import and export dashboards saves us a lot of time for popular systems and dashboards.

The lack of native ability to aggregate data from multiple sources could be improved. As it is not a data store, it is challenging to correlate data from multiple data sources. Adding an out-of-box capability to aggregate and correlate different types of data would make Grafana even better.

It is limited on the reporting type supported, which is important for managerial-level officers who want reports that are either general or specific. Improvements in that area would be great.

Machine learning capabilities are still limited. This is an improvement in that area is needed.

Performance improvement when querying and searching textual data would be beneficial.

I've used the solution for more than three years

When computing resources are properly optimized Grafana runs in a quite stable manner. As Grafana is an analytics and visualization platform, it is a bit hungry on CPU and Memory usage. When Grafana instances are properly planned and configured, computing resources bottlenecks can be avoided. Our instances haven't given us headaches from the time we set them up. 

Grafana is mainly for visualization, so many instances can be set as needed. Grafana can also be configured for high availability for some scenarios like alerting, authentication, and databases.

We haven't bought technical support and haven't dealt with their customer service agents.

We used native dashboards and graphs of another system we use. We use Zabbix for monitoring but we added Grafana to add more visualization flexibility.

The initial setup was straightforward, however, some resource optimization and tuning were needed. We have experienced professionals in tuning OS systems and application resources so it was not too complex for us.

We implemented everything fully in-house. Since we never had a vendor team, we don't know yet the level of expertise they have. The Grafana community has been so helpful in this regard.

I can confidently say we have a 100% return on investment. Grafana has greatly enriched our data visualization and analytics. We see the prospect of it appealing even to more senior management. They may not be quite technical, but they appreciate having data nicely visualized so they know what is going on.

You can choose from the fully open-source or enterprise editions. We chose the open-source and did everything in-house. Thorough planning and performance considerations are important, as the tool can be heavy on memory and computing resources.

We considered Kibana before we chose this solution.

The solution is great and is one of the best in the market for visualization.