I use Grafana mostly for monitoring purposes, such as tracking errors or alerts. When certain thresholds of warnings or errors are breached, Grafana sends me an alert because I am supplying it with data. Another use case I have is monitoring CPU usage and bandwidth.
Grafana Enterprise
Grafana LabsExternal reviews
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Outstanding visualization tool with easiness
Effective alerting and user management enhance monitoring but needs a better interface
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
I find Grafana beneficial due to its numerous plugins. Its alerting feature is effective because it allows me to set thresholds to send an email if a certain threshold is met. User management is good, and the administration features enable me to control user access.
What needs improvement?
The interface is not well-liked by my customers. Grafana cannot be easily embedded into certain applications and offers limited customization options for graphs. I think predictive capabilities in alerting could also be improved.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is uncertain for me since I installed Grafana on only one server and did not scale it further.
How was the initial setup?
The setup process was easy for me to follow. I just needed to adhere to a step-by-step guide which was quite straightforward.
What other advice do I have?
I end up using my own customized open-source visualization tool instead of Grafana. Most of the time, I deal with technical aspects.
I rate the overall product seven out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
A Disappointing Experience with Grafana Labs
However, our overall experience turned out to be very disappointing.
Despite only testing Grafana Cloud’s Prometheus service for a short time—and encountering immediate limits that prevented any real functionality—we were billed thousands of dollars with no clear explanation or help.
Attempts to resolve the issue were met with minimal cooperation and opaque justifications that left us feeling let down rather than supported.
When we requested a detailed breakdown (such as which metrics or IP addresses were involved), Grafana’s support team could only repeat that they saw a large volume of data hitting their cloud, insisting it was our fault without giving concrete evidence.
Their attempts at resolution were minimal at best—offering small partial refunds on a huge invoice—and pointedly ignored our contention that the usage data they claimed to have seen was inconsistent with our actual test.
Even after explaining that we never got the service fully working and canceled in fear of racking up more charges, Grafana was unwilling to provide a fair or transparent resolution.
If you’re looking for a cloud solution that stands behind clear pricing, customer-friendly policies, and helpful support, our experience shows Grafana Labs doesn’t meet those standards.
We ended up paying an unjustifiably high bill for a failed test and received almost no cooperation in understanding or rectifying the situation.
It felt like a money grab rather than genuine customer support.
Displays data visually from multiple sources while integrating seamlessly with existing systems
What is our primary use case?
The primary use case for Grafana is to display data from Prometheus in a graphical user interface for easy monitoring and analysis of metrics. It is used for end-to-end tracing of applications and integrates with AWS services.
How has it helped my organization?
Grafana improves the organization by showing data from Prometheus in a user interface.
What is most valuable?
Grafana provides a user-friendly interface for viewing infrastructure metrics through dashboards. It integrates with Prometheus to pull data and offers a straightforward setup process.
Users can monitor metrics with greater ease, and the tool aids in quickly identifying issues by providing a visual representation of data. Grafana's integration capability is straightforward, which facilitates building dashboards as needed.
What needs improvement?
Grafana could consider building its own metrics system to eliminate the reliance on other tools like Prometheus, providing a one-stop solution.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used Grafana for the last four to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There are some instances, about one to two percent of the time, where dashboards do not work, however, these are manageable and typically attributed to the underlying data source.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Grafana is pretty scalable as it can source data from multiple providers without limitation.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward. Those familiar with deployment find it easy to manage and deploy.
What about the implementation team?
The implementation is managed by a different team, and issues with integration have been minimal.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I used the open-source version for my learning, which was free. In an enterprise setting, pricing is reasonable, as many customers use it.
What other advice do I have?
I rate Grafana eight or nine out of ten. The deployment of multiple tools could be streamlined into a single solution for better efficiency.
Complex features hinder streamlined user interface and good stability
What is our primary use case?
I use Grafana to deploy OpenVideo and to write an article on Medium on how we can deploy some open source projects with CloudFormation.
How has it helped my organization?
I have installed Grafana to see custom metrics like the number of connected users, number of rooms, and CPU usage.
What is most valuable?
All the features are complicated. It's comparable to Terraform, and I prefer CloudWatch.
What needs improvement?
The features are complicated and not intuitive. It would be better if they made the technology easy to use without needing to read extensive documentation. The dashboard interface is too wide, and it's challenging to find buttons or features.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Grafana is stable and has great engineers.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I would rate the scalability at six out of ten. It meets some needs, however, it could be improved.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I prefer CloudWatch over Grafana due to its ease of use.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is too complicated. Even at a junior level, I found it challenging to navigate without guidance.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I prefer CloudWatch with custom metrics.
What other advice do I have?
Make the interface intuitive and user-friendly. Highlight features clearly on the interface so that users can easily find and access them.
I'd rate the solution four out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Awsome product for montoring the server utilization
loging issue
Great product to sort and view logs
clean visualization of financial data
Why you should use Grafana for office dashboard
Can monitor metrics on dashboards but needs to have own query language
What is our primary use case?
We use the tool to monitor metrics on dashboards.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the product for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability-wise, our on-premises version was mixed, but the cloud version is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
My company has 2000 users.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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.