grafana

What is grafana?

The grafana image runs Grafana, a widely adopted open-source observability and visualization platform. Grafana allows users to build dashboards, set up alerts, and visualize metrics, logs, and traces from multiple data sources including Prometheus, Loki, InfluxDB, Elasticsearch, and cloud monitoring APIs.

Grafana is often deployed as part of a modern monitoring stack, giving SREs, developers, and analysts a unified interface for understanding system performance and application health. It is particularly valuable in Kubernetes and microservices environments, where data comes from diverse exporters and backends.

The grafana image packages the full web application in a container, enabling quick local testing, CI/CD integration, and production deployments in clusters. Its relevance lies in centralizing observability data, helping teams correlate metrics and logs, and providing real-time visibility into distributed systems.

How to use this image

The grafana image can be run standalone for quick dashboards or deployed in Kubernetes with persistent storage and externalized configuration.

‍Run Grafana locally:

<code>docker run -d -p 3000:3000 grafana/grafanaDefault credentials:• Username: admin Password: admin</code>

Persist data between restarts:

<code>docker run -d -p 3000:3000 \  -v grafana-storage:/var/lib/grafana \  grafana/grafana</code>

Deploy in Kubernetes with Helm:

<code>helm repo add grafana https://grafana.github.io/helm-chartshelm install grafana grafana/grafana</code>

Grafana logs to stdout and listens on port 3000 by default. Dashboards, data sources, and alert rules can be managed through the UI or provisioned via configuration files mounted into /etc/grafana/provisioning.

Image variants

Published under grafana/grafana, the image is available in multiple variants:

grafana/grafana:latest

Tracks the most recent stable release.Use for testing or dev environments.

grafana/grafana:<version>

Tagged by release version (e.g. 11.1.0, 10.4.2).

Recommended for production to maintain compatibility and reproducibility.

grafana/grafana-enterprise

Enterprise edition with advanced access controls, reporting, and support.

grafana/grafana-oss

Community OSS variant, suitable for open-source and small deployments.Grafana images are rebuilt regularly to incorporate bug fixes and security updates. For reproducible environments, pin to a specific version tag.