Import the Real-Time Metrics dashboard

You can import a Grafana dashboard that charts requests, cache, HTTP methods, and status codes from Real-Time Metrics, and the top request URIs, user agents, and hosts from Real-Time Events. For the dashboard that the Azion plugin installs, refer to Import the pre-built Grafana dashboard.

The dashboard is a JSON model of eight panels in two rows. The Metrics row reads the httpMetrics dataset from the Real-Time Metrics GraphQL API. The Events row reads workloadEvents, a Real-Time Events dataset, from a second endpoint. Grafana needs one data source for each endpoint.

Prerequisites

• A Grafana instance where you can import a dashboard.
• The GraphQL Data Source plugin (fifemon-graphql-datasource) on that instance. Every panel of the dashboard uses this plugin, not the Azion plugin for Grafana.
• A personal token. To create one, refer to How to manage a personal token.
• An application with requests in the last two days, the range the dashboard opens on.

Add a data source for the metrics panels

The five panels of the Metrics row send their queries to https://api.azion.com/v4/metrics/graphql. Do not use https://api.azionapi.net/metrics/graphql: that host answers 403 with an HTML error page.

To add the metrics data source in Grafana:

Grafana saves the data source and runs a test against the endpoint. Without the Authorization header, the endpoint answers 401 with {"detail": "Authentication credentials were not provided."}.

Add a data source for the events panels

The three panels of the Events row query workloadEvents, a Real-Time Events dataset. The metrics endpoint does not serve that dataset and answers 400:

The same queries run unchanged on https://api.azion.com/v4/events/graphql, with the same personal token.

To add the events data source in Grafana:

Grafana saves the second data source. Each row of the dashboard then has an endpoint that serves its dataset.

Import the dashboard model

The dashboard model opens on the last two days (now-2d to now), in the time zone of the browser, with no automatic refresh. It declares no data source inputs. Each panel names its data source by a fixed UID: loKOM5K4k in the Events row and d863aedd-0f4f-48e4-ae94-bf0bc73120a6 in the Metrics row. The model also defines a hidden host variable that no panel query uses.

The dashboard model:

To import the dashboard in Grafana:

Grafana lists the dashboard as Dashboard Exemple - Azion, the title the model sets. It holds three collapsed rows: an empty Row title, Events, and Metrics.

Connect each panel to its data source

The panels of the imported dashboard keep the data source UIDs of the model, and those UIDs do not match the data sources you added. Connect each panel to the data source that serves its row.

To connect a panel in Grafana:

Repeat the steps for each of the eight panels. Each panel then sends its query to its own endpoint, for the range of the dashboard.

Set the Logs panel to the dashboard range

The Logs panel, in the Metrics row, runs the CountRowsByHost query, which counts the httpMetrics rows of each host. Its query fixes the range at 2023-03-22T17:03:00 to 2023-03-22T18:05:00. That range returns an empty httpMetrics array, so the panel shows no rows whatever range you pick in the dashboard.

The edited query replaces the fixed range with the dashboard variables ${__from:date:iso} and ${__to:date:iso}, as the other panels do:

To edit the query in Grafana:

Grafana fills both variables with the range of the dashboard. For the last two days, the metrics endpoint answers with one row per host, the largest count first:

Each count is the number of httpMetrics rows recorded for that host in the range.

Check the panels

Each panel queries one dataset and charts the fields in this table. When a panel charts its fields for the dashboard range, its data source works.

The three Events panels count the host values of each group and keep 10 groups with limit: 10. Their orderBy: [count_DESC] line is commented out, so the query does not ask for the largest groups first.

In Status Codes, a class field counts only the status codes of that class that have no field of their own. For example, requestsStatusCode2xx reads 0 when every 2xx response is a 200, which requestsStatusCode200 counts. For the per-code fields, refer to Break down requests by status code.

For the type and meaning of each httpMetrics field, refer to Real-Time Metrics GraphQL fields.

Next steps