Are you trying to install Grafana on CentOS 7?

Grafana is free and open-source metric analytics and visualization software. Here at Bobcares, we install Grafana as part of our Server Management Services for web hosts and online service providers.

Today we’ll take a look at how to install it.

What is Grafana?

Grafana is a free and open-source visualization and analytics monitoring software. It is a good alternative to Zabbix’s dashboards. Usually, it has the ability to supports many third-party software applications such as Prometheus, PNP, InfluxDB, Graphite, etc.

The features include,

1. It brings data together in a way that is both efficient and organized.
2. Allows users to better understand the metrics of their data through queries, informative visualizations, and alerts.
3. More customization and power.

How to install Grafana on CentOS 7

Now, let us take a look at the how our Support Engineers install Grafana on CentOS 7

To begin, prerequisites required before proceeding to installation,

1. CentOS 7 server with root access.

2. Disable SELinux.

Moreover, there are different methods to install Grafana on RPM-based Linux Distributions like Centos/Fedora.

Here, let’s see how to install from Grafana repository.

1. Initially, we install Grafana via YUM Repository. For that, we create a repo file.

vim /etc/yum.repos.d/grafana.repo

2. Next, we add the following contents to the file,

[grafana]
name=grafana
baseurl=https://packages.grafana.com/oss/rpm
repo_gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://packages.grafana.com/gpg.key
sslverify=1
sslcacert=/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt

3. Again, we install Grafana by the following command:

yum install grafana

4. Then, we install additional font packages with the following commands to install the free type and urw fonts.

yum install fontconfig
yum install freetype*
yum install urw-fonts

5. We check the status of the service and enable Grafana Service

systemctl status grafana-server

If service is not active, we start it using the below command:

systemctl start grafana-server

systemctl enable grafana-server.service

6. Then, we modify the Firewall by changing the firewall configuration to allow Grafana port. So, we run the following command.

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=3000/tcp --permanent

Once the configuration is updated, we reload the firewall service.

firewall-cmd --reload

That’s it.

In addition, Grafana is accessed by the  URL http://Your Server IP or Host Name:3000/ and enter “admin” in the login and password fields.

Install Plugins with Grafana on CentOS 7

Additionally, Grafana’s functionality can be extended by installing plugins. There are three types of plugins:

1. Panels: new blocks that can be used with the dashboard, such as pie charts or histograms.
2. Data sources: new storage backends for the time-series data, so we can pull data from other sources.
3. Apps: complex plugins that bundle data sources and panels within a single package.

[Need any further assistance to install Grafana? – We’re available 24*7]

Conclusion

In short, Grafana is a free and open-source visualization and analytics monitoring software. In today’s writeup, we saw how our Support Engineers install Grafana on CentOS 7.