Overview of My Grafana Setup

For the past few weeks I have been working extensively on the devices in my LAN. My FreeNAS had crashed due to a power outage resulting on a burnt memory module and a data issue with my main pool that caused a kernel panic on boot. My remote backup solution had not been working for over a year, so I knew that it would also need a complete re-design.

I rebuilt my FreeNAS pools and setup a new remote backup solution using ZFS send (FreeNAS => Ubuntu 20.04), and got a couple of UPSs to protect from future power failures. I also created a better backup structure and jobs for my main devices (will post about that later), and configured additional alerts for device availability and job status. And to tie all down together, I thought what better than to revamp my Grafana dashboard to show all this new info.

Here’s the final result! I’m quite happy with it.

How Everything is Placed Together

When I first started with Grafana, I was mainly using it with the Zabbix plugin and an imported pfSense dashboard. I had one influx database that was used with pfSense, and a MariaDB for the imported Zabbix data. The dashboard gave me a basic overview of my network data usage (pfSense) as well as status for my LAN devices (Zabbix).

Old dashboard

With the new configuration things got a bit more complex (as expected). I’m now displaying data from 5 different servers, with 2 different OS types (FreeBSD and Linux) and 5 different distributions (pfSense, FreeNAS, Arch, CentOS and Ubuntu). My collector of choice is Telegraf (due to it’s low resource and simplicity), and I have made an effort to stick to it throughout the different OSs in my design.

The Grafana Server

• OS: CentOS 7
• Databases:
  • InfluxDB
    • DB1 - pfsense
    • DB2 - Linux/FreeNAS
  • MariaDB
    • zabbix
• Plugins:
  • Zabbix - Zabbix plugin for Grafana | Grafana Labs
  • worldPing - worldPing plugin for Grafana | Grafana Labs
  • Pie Chart - Pie Chart plugin for Grafana | Grafana Labs
  • Status Panel - Status Panel plugin for Grafana | Grafana Labs
• Imported Dashboards:
  • pfSense System Dashboard dashboard for Grafana | Grafana Labs
  • Telegraf: system dashboard dashboard for Grafana | Grafana Labs

Collectors

• CentOS (also the Grafana server)
  • Zabbix => MariaDB
    • Collects LAN statistics
  • telegraf => InfluxDB (DB2)
    • Collects server resources
• pfSense
  • telegraf => InfluxDB (DB1)
    • Collects server resources, network usage and UPS status
• Desktop (Arch)
  • telegraf => InfluxDB (DB2)
    • Collects server resources and UPS status
• FreeNAS
  • telegraf => InfluxDB (DB2)
    • Collects server resources and ZPOOL status/usage
• Ubuntu
  • telegraf => InfluxDB (DB2)
    • Collects server resources, VPN status, IP address and ZPOOL status/usage

How it all looks together

As the proverb that says that “A pictures is worth a thousand words”, if you are visual person like me the diagram below will help you have a better understanding of the setup I listed above.

Breaking it Down

Now let’s dive a bit more into the current dashboard looking at what data is being displayed and from what data source.

I have divided the dashboard into 8 sections and labeled it with numbers (they may be small, but they are there).

Section 1: WAN Ping

• Description: Displays ping status to 4 specific hosts
• Information displayed:
  • Ping status to Google
  • Ping status to Google DNS
  • Ping status to Cludflare DNS
  • Ping status to my ISP’s gateway (Bell)
• Data source: MariaDB (Zabbix)

Section 2: pfSense Network Data

• Description: Diplays network related data from pfSense
• Information displayed:
  • Monthly WAN data usage
  • Daily WAN data usage
  • Wan throughput
  • LAN thorughput
• Data source: InfluxDB (DB1)

Section 3: pfSense OS Data

• Description: Displays system resource for pfSense
• Information displayed:
  • Status (up/down)
  • Uptime
  • Active users
  • CPU, memory, storage (ZFS) usage
  • UPS information
• Data source:
  • InfluxDB (DB1)
  • Zabbix plugin

Section 4: FreeNAS

• Description: Displays system resource for FreeNAS
• Information displayed:
  • Status (up/down)
  • Plugin status (up/down)
  • Uptime
  • Active users
  • CPU, memory, storage (ZFS) usage
• Data source:
  • InfluxDB (DB2)
  • Zabbix plugin

Section 5: Ubuntu

• Description: Displays system resource for Ubuntu
• Information displayed:
  • Status (up/down)
  • VPN status (up/down)
  • IP address
  • Uptime
  • Active users
  • CPU, memory, storage (ZFS) usage
• Data source:
  • InfluxDB (DB2)
  • Zabbix plugin

Section 6: CentOS

• Description: Displays system resource for CentOS
• Information displayed:
  • Status (up/down)
  • Uptime
  • Active users
  • CPU, memory, storage usage
• Data source:
  • InfluxDB (DB2)
  • Zabbix plugin

Section 7: Arch

• Description: Displays system resource for Arch
• Information displayed:
  • Status (up/down)
  • Uptime
  • Active users
  • CPU, memory, storage usage
  • UPS information
• Data source:
  • InfluxDB (DB2)
  • Zabbix plugin

Section 8: LAN

• Description: Diplays LAN related data
• Information displayed:
  • ICMP ping history for LAN devices
  • Current status of LAN device (up/down)
• Data source:

Conclusion

While I’m happy with this setup there is still some room for improvement (as there always is). At some point I would like to consolidate the two Influx databases, integrate Unifi Controller and SmartThings data, and possibly add a Plex dashboard as well.

Got any comments or questions? Feel free to leave them in the comment section below.