Vertica Integration with Grafana: Connection Guide

About Vertica Connection Guides

Vertica connection guides provide basic instructions for connecting a third-party partner product to Vertica. Connection guides are based on our testing with specific versions of Vertica and the partner product.

Vertica and Grafana: Latest Versions Tested

Software Version
Grafana Server

9.3.6 Local Instance

Grafana Server Platform

RHEL 7.9

Desktop Client

Windows 10

Vertica-Grafana-Datasource plugin

2.1.0

Vertica Server 12.0.3

Grafana Overview

Grafana allows you to query, visualize, alert on, and understand your metrics no matter where they are stored. Create, explore, and share dashboards with your team and foster a data-driven culture.

To know more about new enhancements and feature updates, see the Release Notes and README.md in the vertica-grafana-datasource GitHub page.

Installing Grafana

To install Grafana,

  1. Go to the Grafana Downloads page to create an account.

    You can either choose to Sign up for Grafana Cloud or a Self-managed account.

  2. Download Grafana from https://grafana.com/grafana/download

    You can choose the version you need from the drop-down list.

  3. Follow the Grafana documentation for installation and configuration instructions.
  4. Start the Grafana server and make sure it’s accessible via a browser.

Installing the Vertica-Grafana-datasource plugin

For a non-development installation,

  1. Go to https://grafana.com/grafana/plugins/vertica-grafana-datasource.
  2. Click the Installation tab and follow the instructions.

    There are options for installing on both a local Grafana instance and a hosted Grafana instance.

  3. After installing, and configuring, restart the Grafana Server.

Connecting Grafana to Vertica

  1. Log into Grafana with the Admin credentials.
  2. On the left toolbar, hover over the gear icon to open the Configuration menu, and then click Plugins.
  3. In the Search bar, type Vertica to search.

  4. Click the Vertica plugin and then click Install.

  5. Click Create a Vertica datasource.

  6. Enter the datasource details and click Save and Test. A connection successful message appears.


  7. To test the ability to visualize data through the connection
    1. Click Home on the top left corner.
    2. Click the + icon and select Dashboard to create a new dashboard.
    3. Click Add Query.

    The screen refreshes to a New Dashboard with a graph panel and a predefined Vertica SQL query. The graph populates within a second or two confirming it can fetch data from Vertica.


  8. From here you can follow the Grafana documentation on how to build and format visualizations.

Troubleshooting

If the Vertica plugin doesn’t show up in the plugins screen, search the /var/log/grafana/grafana.log file for "Starting Vertica datasource plugin" and review from there down. It should provide hints on the path it’s looking for plugins in, and specifics on finding and loading the Vertica plugin.

Following is a short set of entries showing a successful load:

t=2023-04-02T11:57:10-0400 lvl=info msg="Starting Vertica datasource plugin" logger=plugins.backend pluginId=vertica-grafana-datasource
t=2023-04-02T11:57:10-0400 lvl=info msg="Registering plugin" logger=plugins id=vertica-grafana-datasource
t=2023-04-02T11:57:35-0400 lvl=info msg="Request Completed" logger=context userId=1 orgId=1 uname=admin method=GET path="/public/img/icons/unicons/icon-gf icon-gf-panel.svg" remote_addr=10.100.246.86 time_ms=13 size=41965 referer=http://10.20.71.85:3000/plugins/vertica-grafana-datasource/

Known Limitations

  • BINARY, VARBINARY, and LONG VARBINARY data types are not displayed correctly. Values are displayed in hexadecimal format.

  • For DOUBLE and DECIMAL data types, values are rounded off.

  • For DATE, TIME, and TIMETZ data types, incorrect values are displayed.

  • For TIMESTAMP and TIMESTAMPTZ data types, values are displayed incorrectly. Milliseconds are truncated beyond 3 digits.

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