Deployment Overview of Grafana on Server¶

Prerequisites and Basic Requirements¶

To ensure a successful deployment, the following requirements must be met:

• Operating System: Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Rocky Linux, or AlmaLinux.

• Privileges: Root or sudo access is required for package installation and Docker management.

• Ports:

• 80/tcp (HTTP)

• 443/tcp (HTTPS)

• 22/tcp (SSH)

• 3000/tcp (Internal Grafana access)

FQDN of the final panel on the hostkey.in domain¶

The application is accessible via a specific subdomain based on the server ID.

File and Directory Structure¶

The deployment utilizes the following directory structure for configuration and data persistence:

• /root/grafana: Contains the application orchestration files (compose.yml).

• /data/nginx/user_conf.d/: Stores Nginx proxy configurations.

• /data/nginx/nginx-certbot.env: Environment variables for the SSL certificate management service.

• /data/grafana/datasources: Directory used for provisioning Grafana data sources.

Application installation process¶

The application is deployed using a combination of system configuration and Docker orchestration:

1. System Preparation: The installer identifies the operating system to configure the firewall (UFW on Debian/Ubuntu or Firewalld on RHEL-based systems) to allow HTTP, HTTPS, and SSH traffic.

2. Docker Environment Setup: Docker is installed if not already present, and a dedicated Docker volume named grafana-data is created for persistent storage.

3. Orchestration Deployment: The application is deployed using Docker Compose located in /root/grafana/compose.yml.

4. Security Configuration: Upon container startup, the administrator password for the default admin user is automatically reset via the Grafana CLI within the running container to ensure secure access.

Access Rights and Security¶

• Firewall: The system is configured to allow incoming traffic on ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS).

• SSL/TLS: SSL certificates are managed via a dedicated Nginx container using Certbot for automated certificate acquisition and renewal.

• Container Isolation: Services run within isolated Docker containers with specific restart policies (unless-stopped).

Databases¶

Grafana uses an internal database by default, but data persistence is maintained through the following mechanism:

• Storage Location: Persistent data is stored in a Docker volume named grafana-data.

• Provisioning: Custom data source configurations are mounted from /data/grafana/datasources to /etc/grafana/provisioning/datasources.

Docker Containers and Their Deployment¶

The deployment consists of two primary containers:

Nginx Certbot Container¶

• Image: jonasal/nginx-certbot:latest

• Ports:

• 80:80

• 443:443

• Volumes:

• nginx_secrets:/etc/letsencrypt (SSL certificates)

• /data/nginx/user_conf.d:/etc/nginx/user_conf.d (Proxy configurations)

• Environment Variables:

• [email protected]

Grafana Container¶

• Image: grafana/grafana-oss:8.2.6

• Ports: 3000:3000

• Volumes:

• /data/grafana/datasources:/etc/grafana/provisioning/datasources

• grafana-data:/var/lib/grafana (Persistent application data)

• Restart Policy: unless-stopped

Application Update Instructions¶

To update the Grafana application, navigate to the deployment directory and pull the latest images defined in the configuration:

cd /root/grafana
docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

Location of configuration files and data¶

Available ports for connection¶

• HTTPS: 443 (External access via proxy)

• HTTP: 80 (For SSL certificate challenges)

• Grafana Internal: 3000 (Direct container access)

Starting and Stopping the application¶

The application is managed using Docker Compose commands from the /root/grafana directory:

• Start the application:

  docker compose up -d
  

• Stop the application:

  docker compose down