Setting Up Grafana MongoDB Integration: 4 Easy Steps

Data Analysis is one of the most important aspects of running a business efficiently. Data Analysts and Business Analysts analyze data, generate insights from it. To keep the track of any activity regularly requires visual data that can save time and easy to understand than figures. Data Visualization is required in every company applying a data-driven approach to their business to generate reports understandable to higher management and keep track of activities at a glance.

Grafana is a Data Visualization tool that is widely used by organizations to let them access all theri data in dashboards and charts. Grafana can extract this data from multiple data sources. MongoDB is one of the widely used NoSQL Databases that helps companies store their data with great flexibility. Grafana MongoDB plugins communicate with external Databases and return data in a format that Grafana recognizes.

With the help of Grafana MongoDB Integration, you can immediately use the data in any of your existing dashboards by adding a data source plugin. In this article, you will learn about the steps to set up Grafana MongoDB Integration. You will also read how to monitor and visualize data using the Grafana MongoDB plugin.

Setting Up Grafana MongoDB Integration

Now that you have understood about Grafana, MongoDB, and the need for Grafana MongoDB Plugin connection. In this section, you will learn the steps to set up Grafana MongoDB Integration. The steps will guide you to download and configure Grafana MongoDB and also connect them using the plugin. The following steps for Grafana MongoDB Integration are listed below:

• Step 1: Downloading Grafana
• Step 2: Install with Windows installer
• Step 3: Installing MongoDB
• Step 4: Connecting Grafana with MongoDB

Step 1: Downloading Grafana

• Visit www.grafana.com. Go to Download Grafana. 
•  On the next window that appears, choose a Grafana version to install, as shown in the image below.

• 3. Choose an Edition.
  • Enterprise – Download is recommended. Operationally identical to the open-source version, but with additional features that can be unlocked with a license if desired.
  • Open Source – Functionally identical to the enterprise version; however, if you want enterprise features, you must download the enterprise version, as shown in the image below.

4.   Select the Operating System you have; for this Grafana MongoDB Integration tutorial, Windows is used.

Step 2: Install with Windows installer 

• Click Download the installer.
• Open and click the downloaded file, as shown in the image below.

• A prompt for the installation wizard will appear. Select the “Next” option.
• The next window that appears requests your agreement to the license. If you agree, check the box. Then, press the ‘Next‘ button, as shown in the image below.

• The window that appears will show you the path where your file will be installed in your system, as shown in the image below.

• Select the ‘Install‘ option.
• A window similar to this will appear when installing Grafana.
• Enjoy Grafana by clicking the ‘Finish‘ button.

Step 3: Installing MongoDB

You must first download MongoDB before you can install it. Here are the steps to take.

• Launch your browser.
• Go to www.mongodb.com and log in.
• Once the site is open, select the ‘Product‘ option in the upper left corner of the page.
• Choose one of the packages that you want to install on your system.
• After selecting the appropriate package, the screen scrolls to the download option, as shown in the image below.

• Configure the version, platform, and package; then select the download option.
• MongoDB has now been downloaded to your computer. On your system, open the MongoDB downloaded file. A wizard for installation will appear.
• Press the next button.
• Then, check the box indicating that you agree to the terms and conditions. Then press the ‘Next’ button. Another page appears.
• On the following page, you will see two options. i.e. complete and custom. Select the ‘Complete‘ option to obtain the full version of MongoDB, as shown in the image below.

• A screen shows with the option ‘install mongodb as a service‘. You can change the settings to your liking and then click ‘Next’ button, as shown in the image below.

• The following window will prompt you to install MongoDB Compass, the official graphical user interface for MongoDB. Then, press the ‘Next’ button.
• When you click the install button on the window, a window appears with instructions for installing MongoDB.
• After installation, press the “Finish” button. MongoDB is now installed and ready to use on your system.

Step 4: Connecting Grafana with MongoDB

The next step is to connect Grafana MongoDB Database using the plugin.

• Install and start the MongoDB proxy server.
• Open the command prompt and set the directory to mongodb-grafana directory 
• Install the node with npm install, dependencies in js.
• To start the REST API proxy to MongoDB, use npm run server. The server listens on “http://localhost:3333 by default”.
• Install Grafana MongoDB plugin components on your system.
• Copy the whole mongodb-grafana dir into the Grafana plugins dir you set while downloading the Grafana.
• Restart the Grafana server.
• Open the browser and log in to Grafana using the link – “http://localhost:3000/”.
• Enter the default username and password i.e. Admin.
• Select Datasource from the dropdown menu under settings.
• Use the search dialogue to look for a certain data source by typing its name. Alternatively, you can browse supported data sources by time series, logging, tracing, and other categories.
• Place your cursor over the data source you wish to add and press Enter.
• Add the MongoDB data source.

That’s it! You have completed the Grafana MongoDB Integration using the plugin. 

Monitoring Data With Grafana MongoDB Integration

Grafana allows you to create a dashboard by combining SingleStat and Graph panels. The dashboard’s top section illustrates the main status of a hosted Grafana instance:

The following section shows the OK/CRIT status for each phase of the synthetic process:

In graph form, the final part provides further information:

Visualizing Data With Grafana MongoDB Integration 

We’ll use Grafana to import the MongoDB Overview dashboard in this example. Grafana imports the MongoDB dashboard.

Go to http://localhost:3000 to access your Grafana instance. (if no default ports were changed in your configuration file) Drag your cursor over the ‘+‘ icon on the left menu and select Import, as shown in the image below.

You should then be directed to the Import screen. Select the option to upload a JSON file, as shown in the image below.

Navigate to the root directory folder (where you saved your dashboard) and double-click the MongoDB Overview.json file, depending on the operating system you’re using.

Your dashboard should always be imported immediately, along with real-time MongoDB Database updates, as shown in the image below.

What can you achieve by Grafana MongoDB Integration?

1. Customizable dashboards: Grafana can connect to MongoDB and allow building interactive dashboards with graphs, charts to visualize MongoDB data based on custom queries.
2. Real-time metrics: Grafana can provide real-time visibility into MongoDB performance metrics like queries per second, active connections, replication lag etc. This allows real-time monitoring.
3. Usage analytics: By analyzing MongoDB data with Grafana, usage analytics can be done to get insights on database reads/writes, most frequent queries, collection growth etc.
4. Data analytics: Complex data queries can be written within Grafana to analyze data trends and patterns for analytical applications over MongoDB data.

Conclusion

In this article, you learned about the steps to set up MongoDB Grafana Integration MongoDB is a Database that allows you to manage document-oriented data as well as store and retrieve it. You also read how to monitor and visualize data using MongoDB Grafana Integration. On the other hand, Grafana is an open-source platform for data visualization, monitoring, and analysis. Grafana requires a Database to store users and dashboards.

It is set to use sqlite3, a built-in Database in the Grafana binary, by default. Grafana can only interact with data stored in a Database. It works with a wide range of Databases. It is also possible to use systems that were not designed primarily for data storage. Grafana MongoDB plugins connect to external Databases and data in the order in such a Grafana-friendly way. By using a data source plugin, you can use the data right away in any of your current dashboards.

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