Grafana Fundamentals

Grafana is the layer where you ask questions of operational data and show the answers to people who need to act. It connects to data sources, sends them queries, and presents the returned data in dashboards, panels, and alerts. Grafana does not replace the systems that collect or store telemetry. It makes their data easier to explore, compare, share, and act on.

That distinction matters. Prometheus, Loki, Tempo, a cloud monitoring service, a SQL database, and many other backends keep data and expose query languages. Grafana sits in front of them. A panel sends a query to its selected data source. Grafana renders the response as a time series, table, stat, log view, trace view, or another visualization. If the data source has no useful data, a polished dashboard cannot create the missing evidence.

The working model