February 2018 Summaries

TimeShift issue 35 highlights the excitement surrounding the upcoming GrafanaCon EU, with only a few Angel tickets remaining, the proceeds of which will benefit the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The conference in Amsterdam promises two days of engaging talks on Grafana and the open-source monitoring community, featuring over 30 speakers and networking opportunities. Grafana 5.0 beta 1 has been released with UX and UI improvements ahead of the stable release. The newsletter also shares insights from various blog posts on topics such as load testing with Apache Jmeter on Kubernetes, using AWS Lambda with Grafana for sentiment analysis, and creating Grafana dashboards with Influx and PowerShell. Additionally, Grafana Labs is hiring, inviting those passionate about open-source software to join their team. The issue concludes with an invitation for feedback and engagement through social media and the Grafana community forum.

In the latest issue of TimeShift, Grafana Labs shares exciting updates, including the sell-out of General Admission tickets for GrafanaCon EU, though a limited number of Angel Tickets remain, with proceeds benefiting the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The release of Grafana 5.0 beta 3 introduces new features such as a revamped dashboard layout engine, improved user experience, and enhanced organizational capabilities with dashboard folders and permissions. The release also highlights the benefits of dashboard and datasource provisioning via configuration files. The blogosphere section features Grafana's integration into Walmart's cloud initiatives and practical guidance on monitoring Spring Boot applications with Prometheus and Grafana. Additionally, the newsletter showcases updates to Grafana plugins, upcoming events, and a featured tweet about a STEM project involving Grafana. Grafana Labs is also actively hiring, inviting those passionate about open-source software to join their team.

Grafana 5.0 beta has been released, marking the largest update since the project's inception, and introducing significant features such as teams, dashboard folders, and enhanced permissions alongside improvements to the light theme and icon clean-up. The release was celebrated with community engagement, including conferences and meetups focused on Grafana, monitoring, and observability. Attendees can explore the latest functionalities through public dashboards and tutorials, such as using Grafana for ChatOps or integrating it with various data sources. Additionally, the upcoming GrafanaCon in Amsterdam promises a launch party for Grafana v5.0, featuring talks from major industry players like Google and CERN. The newsletter also highlights ongoing events, webinars, and the company's hiring initiatives, encouraging community interaction and feedback.

Interpreting load test results involves analyzing key metrics like virtual users (VUs) and VU load time to identify trends that indicate the system's performance under varying loads. A stable system is suggested by a flat VU load time with increasing VUs, whereas an increase in both signals potential performance issues. Digging deeper into additional graphs like bandwidth, load generator CPU, and memory helps confirm findings and detect bottlenecks, such as network or CPU utilization issues. The URL and Pages tabs provide further insight into individual request and page load times, which can uncover hidden issues, especially if certain requests result in unexpected status codes or resource bottlenecks. Consistent performance testing is essential to identify and address problems before they impact users, and tools like Grafana k6 offer features like Thresholds, CLI, and Notifications to streamline this process.

Grafana's weekly update highlights its milestone of surpassing 20,000 stars on GitHub and the upcoming release of Grafana 5.0, inviting community feedback. The week is packed with events, including presentations at FOSDEM in Brussels and Jfokus in Stockholm, where Grafana's creator Torkel Odegaard and other experts will discuss new features and monitoring strategies. The blogosphere section discusses integrating dashboards and configurations into version control, Prometheus alerts in OpenShift, and monitoring techniques for large-scale websites. Upcoming events include GrafanaCon in Amsterdam, featuring talks from industry leaders and the launch of Grafana v5.0, and other conferences centered around monitoring solutions and the role of observability in DevOps. The post also highlights a tweet showcasing the use of Grafana for monitoring Raspberry Pi systems and announces hiring opportunities at Grafana Labs, encouraging community engagement through comments and social media interactions.