May 2018 Summaries

Daniel Lee's talk at the Swetugg 2018 conference in Stockholm focused on the principles of whitebox monitoring and the practical use of tools to monitor systems, particularly through the Azure Monitor plugin for Grafana. The presentation highlighted how the plugin integrates Azure resource metrics and live application data from Application Insights into a single graph, offering a comprehensive view of system performance. The session included a live demonstration of the plugin, exploration of the query builder for creating custom metric views, and an introduction to template variables to streamline data exploration. Additionally, Lee delved into the technical aspects of developing custom integrations with Grafana, using the Simple JSON Data Source plugin and ASP.NET Core MVC to build a basic backend integration, inviting attendees to engage with further questions and discussions on the Grafana community site.

This edition of TimeShift celebrates the implementation of GDPR and updates from Grafana Labs, including the release of Grafana 5.1.3, which addresses a scrolling issue in Firefox. The blog features insights from recent talks and guides on utilizing Grafana for monitoring various systems like MySQL, MongoDB, and Kubernetes, alongside practical applications such as visualizing GPS data and fitness metrics. It highlights new and updated Grafana plugins, including the SingleStat Math Panel and enhancements to the Prometheus Alertmanager Data source, AJAX Panel, and others. The newsletter also promotes upcoming events, including webinars and conferences like Monitorama and InfluxDays, and invites applications for engineering positions. The community is encouraged to share feedback and stay connected through social media and the Grafana Labs community forum.

Carl Bergquist's presentation at a developer conference in Malmö, Sweden, titled "Monitoring for Everyone," explores the fundamentals of monitoring and observability, offering insights into key concepts like logs, metrics, and distributed tracing. He emphasizes the importance of understanding system performance, identifying performance drops, and determining their causes. Bergquist discusses the necessity of flexible monitoring tools, especially in environments utilizing containers, microservices, and continuous deployment, highlighting what data to collect and how to effectively monitor and alert on system changes. The talk is designed for both newcomers and those seeking a refresher on monitoring concepts, with further engagement encouraged through the Grafana community site.

TimeShift's Issue 45 highlights the release of Grafana v5.1.3, which addresses a scrolling issue in Firefox and encourages users to explore other new features. The newsletter also features various Grafana-related resources, including a video presentation on monitoring with Azure and Grafana, a tutorial on predictive maintenance with MapR, and guides on monitoring Docker containers using cAdvisor. Additionally, it introduces Manala, an Ansible toolkit for setting up a monitoring stack, and announces open engineering positions at Grafana Labs. The issue promotes upcoming events like webinars on SRE toolchains, discussions on monitoring and distributed tracing at Slack and Pinterest, and conferences such as Monitorama 2018 and the Sensu Summit. The newsletter ends by encouraging community engagement through comments, social media, and the Grafana Labs community forum.

TimeShift Issue 44, published by Trent White on May 11, 2018, highlights the release of Grafana v5.1.2, which includes a crucial MySQL bug fix and an update for GDPR compliance. The issue also features videos from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2018, showcasing talks by Grafana Labs team members, and provides tutorials such as building a generic Icinga2 service graph in Grafana using InfluxDB and monitoring Linux systems with Grafana and Telegraf. Additionally, Grafana Labs is hiring for new positions in its Stockholm office and is participating in several upcoming events, including webinars on building SRE toolchains and monitoring Kubernetes with Grafana. The newsletter encourages community engagement through submissions and interactions on social media platforms.

TimeShift Issue 43 highlights the release of Grafana v5.1, which includes new features like improved scrolling, heatmap support for Prometheus, and Microsoft SQL Server as a data source. It also discusses "Monitoring Mixins," a proposal to simplify pre-configured monitoring setups by packaging Prometheus alerts, recording rules, and Grafana dashboards. Tutorials on monitoring Docker services and Ceph clusters with Prometheus and Grafana are mentioned, alongside updates on Grafana plugins such as the Breadcrumbs Panel and Sidewinder Data Source. The newsletter lists upcoming events, including webinars and conferences, where Grafana-related discussions and presentations will take place, and it also announces Grafana Labs' hiring opportunities.