How to Self-Host Grafana
Grafana is an open-source platform for querying, visualizing, and alerting on metrics, logs, and traces from many data sources. The notes below were checked against the project site and source repository.
When Grafana is a good fit
Choose Grafana when you already have, or plan to run, systems that produce metrics, logs, or traces and you want one place to query and alert on them. Grafana displays and alerts on that data. It does not collect host metrics by itself. You own the dashboards, the credentials stored for data sources, and the upgrades.
Deployment notes
The Docker documentation publishes grafana/grafana and grafana/grafana-oss. Persist /var/lib/grafana so dashboards, users, and plugins survive a new container. Set GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD before the first login and do not keep the image's default admin password. If you outgrow the built-in database, the docs describe an external database; decide that before you have a pile of dashboards in SQLite.
Put the UI behind HTTPS. Anonymous access and open sign-up should stay off unless you have a reason and a review.
Data and recovery
Back up /var/lib/grafana, or the external database if you moved state there. Data-source passwords are stored with that state. The metrics and logs themselves live in Prometheus, Loki, or whatever you connected; back those up separately if you need the history.
Write down the restore sequence, required secrets, exposed ports, and each data source the instance is allowed to query. A scheduled backup is not complete until a clean host can restore it and pass a functional check.
Important limitation
A Grafana admin can read every data source the instance is configured to query. Treat dashboard credentials and service-account tokens like database passwords.
Production checklist
- Pin and record the deployed version.
- Persist every documented data and configuration path.
- Terminate TLS at a maintained reverse proxy or trusted tunnel.
- Restrict administrative interfaces and rotate default credentials.
- Monitor uptime, disk space, certificate expiry, and failed jobs.
- Test an off-host backup with a real restore.
