How can I change the datasource for a Grafana dashboard?

Question

I've got a new datasource I would like an existing dashboard to use.

How can I change it over? Is there a quicker way than exporting / importing the dashboard?

Cosette

You should see that from the panel. Click Edit->Metrics->Data Source – Bridie

I'd have to change that for each panel though – Cosette

@ChrisStryczynski, did you find a way to do that? I was looking to have two dashboard one pointing to staging prometheus, the other one pointing to production one – Hoggish

Answer 1

Specifying a variable would not solve all the problems with changing a data source for the existing dashboard - there will be still some metadata pointing to the old one, which will result in failures. The only thing that worked for me was to go to dashboard setting and copy aside the JSON model, careful find+replace and pasting back the model. I know it's pretty lame, but this was the only thing that worked. There seems to be something missing with this feature in Grafana at the moment...

Pizzicato

Answer 2

Add __inputs block at the root of JSON file

{
"__inputs": [
    {
      "name": "DS_PROMETHEUS_ID",
      "label": "Prometheus Data Source",
      "description": "",
      "type": "datasource",
      "pluginId": "prometheus",
      "pluginName": "Prometheus"
    }
  ],

...
description: "",
panels:[...] 
...
}

then replace all static uid values with ${DS_PROMETHEUS_ID}

Now while importing the dashboard you will get the option to choose your own data source.

Ornate

Very useful trick for dashboards imported manually. I believe this however will not work for provisioned dashboards say from a git repo workflow. – Umbelliferous

Answer 3

The following trick worked for me with Grafana 8.

As preparation you have to create a datasource variable "DS_PROMETHEUS".

Then inside the dashboard:

1. Click "Share Dashboard or Panel"
2. Switch to "Export" Tab
3. Activate "Export for sharing externally"
4. Click "View JSON" and copy the json to the clipboard

Then in the same dashboard open the "Dashboard settings"->"JSON Model" and paste the json from above.

Judon

Answer 4

You can specify data source variable for a dashboard:

http://docs.grafana.org/reference/templating/#variable-types

Hoggish

That documentation is rather terse - could you add an example? – Glasshouse

Answer 5

In the JSON Model (dashboard settings), you can just replace all the occurrence of the id of the old source by the id of your new one

Gehrke