DevOps Developer with Grafana Salary in 2024

Where is Grafana used?

Spotting Sneaky Server Shenanigans

• Grafana acts like a digital detective, piecing together clues from server metrics to catch performance culprits red-handed.

Juggling Jumbo-Scale Jargons

• It’s like a circus act for data, taming wild swarms of time-series gibberish into beautiful, interpretable graphs.

The Great DevOps Bake-Off

• Imagine Grafana as the head judge in a baking show, where dashboards are cakes and your observability creds are on the line.

Alert-A-Lot Kingdom

• This software serves as the noisy town crier of systems, hollering alerts before the digital kingdom falls into chaos.

Grafana Alternatives

Kibana

Kibana is an open-source data visualization dashboard for Elasticsearch. It provides visualization capabilities on top of the content indexed on an Elasticsearch cluster.

# Sample Kibana visualization query
GET /_search
{
  "query": {
    "match_all": {}
  },
  "aggs": {
    "popular_tags": {
      "terms": {
        "field": "tags.keyword"
      }
    }
  }
}

• Deep integration with Elasticsearch


• Free and open source


• Complex setup for non-Elasticsearch data


• Steep learning curve for beginners


• Powerful data aggregation and visualization


• May be overkill for simple visualization tasks

Prometheus + Grafana

Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system with a dimensional data model, flexible query language, efficient time series database, and modern alerting approach.

# A basic Prometheus query example
# Query to calculate the per-second rate of HTTP requests
rate(http_requests_total{job="api"}[5m])

• Built-in time series database


• Highly efficient and scalable


• Limited to time series data


• Query language has a learning curve


• Seamless integration with Grafana


• Not a complete visualization solution

Graphite + Grafana

Graphite is a scalable monitoring system that stores time-series data and renders graphs of this data on demand. It can be used with Grafana for advanced visualization.

# Example of sending data to Graphite
echo "local.random.diceroll 4 `date +%s`" | nc localhost 2003

• Specialized in storing time-series data


• Mature and widely used


• User interface is less intuitive


• Graph rendering can be resource-intensive


• Flexible data storage and retrieval


• May require additional tools for full functionality

Quick Facts about Grafana

Grafana: A Graphite Artist

In the prehistoric period of 2014, a tool dubbed Grafana sprang to life with an aim to prettify data metrics. Crafted by Torkel Ödegaard, the intention was straightforward but ambitious—make monitoring user-friendly and less eye-gouging. It started as a fork from Kibana 3, which allowed users to visualize logs from Elasticsearch, but Torkel thought, "Why should logs have all the fun?" and pivoted to a focus on time series data from Graphite.

Navigating Versions Like a Time Lord

As Grafana evolved, version leaps foresaw users juggling dashboards like digital ninjas. A major transition from version 2 to 3 introduced a pluggable backend, letting data enthusiasts plug in different data sources into Grafana's sleek interface. Then, the version 4 release in 2016, decked out with an alerting feature, meant you could sip mojitos without fretting about data anomalies—they had those covered. Behold a snippet of its ever-widening support:

// Behold the extensible loveliness of Grafana datasource plugins
const dataSources = {
  graphite: new GraphiteDataSource(opts),
  prometheus: new PrometheusDataSource(opts),
  loki: new LokiDataSource(opts),
  // The list goes on and on...
};

The Cutting-Edge Grafana Labs Umbrella

Not just content with dishing out slick graphs, the brains behind Grafana formed Grafana Labs in 2019, which sounded like a covert superhero HQ. They've been pushing boundaries with open-source zest, gifting the world with Loki for logging and Tempo for tracing. Their concoctions are like the Swiss Army knives for devs, ensuring their dashboards could become the windows to their data's soul.

What is the difference between Junior, Middle, Senior and Expert Grafana developer?

Top 10 Grafana Related Tech

1. JavaScript

   
   

   
   Ah, JavaScript—the duct tape of the internet. For those diving into Grafana's seas, mastering JavaScript is like learning to breathe underwater. It’s the lifeblood of frontend development, so being adept at it means you can manipulate Grafana dashboards like a marionette master with the strings. It squirms into various aspects of Grafana plugins and wiggles its way throughout the stack. A bit like a polite gremlin that only messes with your code when you want it to!
   

   
   




2. React and Angular

   
   

   
   In the royal court of Grafana, React and Angular sit at the high table. They are two of the dominant frameworks that sway the scepter when it comes to creating dynamic and responsive user interfaces. If you can whisper the arcane spells of React hooks or conjure Angular directives, then you're well on your way to constructing Grafana panels that could dazzle even the most stoic server admins. It's like choosing between being a wizard or a sorcerer; both have their own brand of magic.
   

   
   




3. CSS/HTML

   
   

   
   Imagine you've painted a breathtaking landscape, but without CSS and HTML, your Grafana masterpiece will look like a toddler's finger painting. HTML structures the body, while CSS jazzes it up, giving it the sparkle worthy of a dashboard soiree. It's not just about making buttons pretty; it's about dressing up data in a tuxedo and teaching it the waltz.
   

   
   




4. Go

   
   

   
   Go, or as enthusiasts might call it, Golang, is the stallion that powers Grafana's backend. Quick, efficient, and concurrent, it's like the postal service of the computing world, but actually reliable. It carries requests and delivers data with the urgency of a caffeine-addled programmer at a hackathon. If backend development were a kitchen, Golang would be the chef that never drops a plate.
   

   
   




5. SQL

   
   

   
   SQL stands as the trusty old librarian of data languages. If you need to summon specific data from the nether of your databases, you'd best be polite and make sure your SQL queries are well phrased. Grafana loves SQL like peanut butter loves jelly. Having SQL in your spell book means you can make data dance on your dashboard with just a flick of a query.
   

   
   




6. Prometheus

   
   

   
   Every Grafana sorcerer needs a familiar, and Prometheus is a popular choice—a stalwart companion in the realm of monitoring and alerting. It's like having an owl that not only delivers your mail but also tells you your server is on fire. Integrating Prometheus with Grafana, one can create dashboards that not only inform but may also predict the digital apocalypse (or just a server outage).
   

   
   




7. Loki

   
   

   
   Loki, not the god of mischief but the log aggregation system, is Grafana's answer to "Where did I put those darned logs?" It's like having a beast of burden that’s really good at playing hide and seek with log files. When paired with Grafana, it provides a seamless path to visualizing and querying logs without needing to conjure a full-blown Elasticsearch cluster.
   

   
   




8. Git

   
   

   
   If you have ever needed to time-travel in your codebase, Git is your DeLorean with a flux capacitor. It’s a version control system that’s as essential to software development as coffee is to a developer. Being versed in Git means you can track changes, collaborate with others, and not lose your mind when you need to revert your Grafana plugin to that less buggy state.
   

   
   git add plugin-panel-mynewfeature
   git commit -m "Added a flux capacitor to my Grafana panel plugin"
   git push
   

   
   
   
   




9. Docker

   
   

   
   Docker is the magician's box where you stuff your software rabbit—it encapsulates applications into containers, making them portable and easy to deploy. For the wandering Grafana developer, it’s an oasis in the desert of dependency hell. It allows for consistency across environments, and when we say 'It works on my machine', with Docker, we ain't fibbin'.
   

   
   docker run -d -p 3000:3000 grafana/grafana
   

   
   
   
   




10. Linux

    
    

    
    The penguin-flavored OS, Linux, is the Swiss Army knife for developers and the bedrock upon which many a Grafana server stands. It’s like the elemental earth from which data visualization flowers bloom—stable, powerful, and with a command line that's mightier than a sword. It is the canvas upon which your Grafana masterpieces are painted, the stage upon which your data dances.