Graph panel

This documentation topic is designed for Grafana workspaces that support Grafana version 8.x.

For Grafana workspaces that support Grafana version 10.x, see Working in Grafana version 10.

For Grafana workspaces that support Grafana version 9.x, see Working in Grafana version 9.

A graph panel can render as a line, a path of dots, or a series of bars. This type of graph is versatile enough to display almost any time-series data.

Data and field options

When using graph visualizations, you can apply the following options:

• Transformations

• Alerts. This is the only type of visualization that allows you to set alerts. For more information, see Grafana alerting.

• Thresholds

Display options

To refine your visualization, use the following settings:

• Bars – Display values as a bar chart.

• Lines – Display values as a line graph.

• Line width – Specify the width of the line for a series. The default is 1.

• Staircase – Draw adjacent points as staircase.

• Area fill – Specify the amount of color fill for a series. The default is 1; 0 is none.

• Fill gradient – Specify the degree of gradient on the area fill. The default is 0, which is no gradient; 10 is a steep gradient.

• Points – Display points for values.

• Point radius – Control how large the points are.

• Alert thresholds – Display alert thresholds and Regions on the panel.

Stacking and null value

• Stack – Each series is stacked on top of another.

• Percent – Each series is drawn as a percentage of the total of all series. This option is available when Stack is selected.

• Null value – Specify how null values are displayed. This is an important setting. See the note below.

  • connected – If there is a gap in the series, meaning one or more null values, the line will skip the gap and connect to the next non-null value.

  • null If there is a gap in the series, meaning a null value, the line in the graph will be broken and show the gap. This is the default setting.

  • null as zero – If there is a gap in the series, meaning a null value, it will be displayed as a zero value in the graph panel.

Important

If you are monitoring a server’s CPU load and the load reaches 100 percent, the server will lock up, and the agent sending statistics will not be able to collect the load statistic. This leads to a gap in the metrics, and using the default null setting means that Amazon Managed Grafana will show the gaps and indicate that something is wrong. If this is set to connected, it will be easy to miss this signal.

Hover tooltip

Use these settings to change the appearance of the tooltip that appears when you pause over the graph visualization.

• Mode – Determines how many series the hover tooltip shows.

  • All series – The hover tooltip shows all series in the graph. In the series list in the tooltip, the Grafana workspace highlights the series that you are pausing on in bold.

  • Single – The hover tooltip shows only a single series, the one that you are pausing on in the graph.

• Sort order – Sorts the order of series in the hover tooltip if you have selected All series mode. When you pause on a graph, Amazon Managed Grafana displays the values associated with the lines. Generally, users are most interested in the highest or lowest values. Sorting these values can make it much easier to find the data that you want.

  • None – The order of the series in the tooltip is determined by the sort order in your query. For example, you can sort the series alphabetically by series name.

  • Increasing – The series in the hover tooltip are sorted by value and in increasing order, with the lowest value at the top of the list.

  • Decreasing – The series in the hover tooltip are sorted by value and in decreasing order, with the highest value at the top of the list.

Series overrides

Series overrides allow a series in a graph panel to be rendered differently from the others. You can customize display options on a per-series basis or by using regex rules. For example, one series can have a thicker line width to make it stand out or be moved to the right Y-axis.

You can add multiple series overrides.

To add a series override

1. Choose Add series override.

2. In Alias or regex, type or select a series. Choose the field to see a list of available series.

   For example, /Network.*/ would match two series named Network out and Network in.

3. Choose + and then select a style to apply to the series. You can add multiple styles to each entry.

• Bars – Show series as a bar graph.

• Lines – Show series as a line graph.

• Line fill – Show a line graph with area fill.

• Fill gradient – Specify the area fill gradient amount.

• Line width – Set line width.

• Null point mode – Use this option to ignore null values or replace them with zero. This is important if you want to ignore gaps in your data.

• Fill below to – Fill the area between two series.

• Staircase line – Show series as a staircase line.

• Dashes – Show a line with dashes.

• Hidden Series – Hide the series.

• Dash Length – Set the length of dashes in the line.

• Dash Space – Set the length of the spaces between the dashes in the line.

• Points – Show series as separate points.

• Point Radius – Set the radius for point rendering.

• Stack – Set the stack group for the series.

• Color – Set the series color.

• Y-axis – Set the series y-axis.

• Z-index – Set the series z-index (rendering order). This option is important when you are overlaying different styles, such as bar charts and area charts.

• Transform – Transform value to negative to render below the y-axis.

• Legend – Control whether a series is shown in the legend.

• Hide in tooltip – Control whether a series is shown in a graph tooltip.

Axes

Use these options to control the display of axes in the visualization.

Left Y/Right Y

Options are identical for both y-axes.

• Show – Choose to show or hide the axis.

• Unit – Choose the display unit for the y value.

• Scale – Choose the scale to use for the y value: linear, or logarithmic. The default is linear.

• Y-Min – The minimum y value. The default is auto.

• Y-Max – The maximum Y value. The default is auto.

• Decimals – Define how many decimals are displayed for the y value. The default is auto.

• Label – Specify the y axis label. The default is “",

Y-Axes

• Align – Align left and right y-axes by value. The default is unchecked/false.

• Level – Enter the value to use for alignment of left and right y-axes, starting from Y=0. The default is 0. This option is available when Align is selected.

X-Axis

• Show – Choose to show or hide the axis.

• Mode – The display mode completely changes the visualization of the graph panel. It’s like three panels in one. The main mode is the time series mode with time on the x-axis. The other two modes are a basic bar chart mode with series on the x-axis instead of time and a histogram mode.

  • Time (default) – The x-axis represents time and the data is grouped by time (for example, by hour, or by minute).

  • Series – The data is grouped by series, and not by time. The y-axis still represents the value.

    • Value – This is the aggregation type to use for the values. The default is total (summing the values together).

  • Histogram – This option converts the graph into a histogram. A histogram is a kind of bar chart that groups numbers into ranges, often called buckets or bins. Taller bars show that more data falls in that range.

    For more information about histograms, see Introduction to histograms and heatmaps.

    • Buckets – Sets the number of buckets to group the values by. If left empty, Amazon Managed Grafana tries to calculate a suitable number of buckets.

    • X-Min – Filters out values from the histogram that are less than this minimum limit.

    • X-Max – Filters out values that are greater than this maximum limit.

Legend

Use these settings to refine how the legend appears in your visualization.

Options

• Show – Clear to hide the legend. The default is selected (true).

• As Table – Select to display the legend in the table. The default is checked (true).

• To the right – Select to display the legend to the right.

• Width – Enter the minimum width for the legend in pixels. This option is available when To the right is selected.

Values

Additional values can be shown alongside the legend names.

• Min – The minimum value returned from the metric query.

• Max – The maximum value returned from the metric query.

• Avg – The average value returned from the metric query.

• Current – The last value returned from the metric query.

• Total – The sum of all values returned from the metric query.

• Decimals – How many decimals are displayed for legend values and graph hover tooltips.

Amazon Managed Grafana calculates the legend values on the client side. These legend values depend on the type of aggregation or point consolidation that your metric query is using. All the above legend values cannot be correct at the same time.

For example, if you plot a rate such requests/second, which is probably using average as an aggregator, the Total in the legend will not represent the total number of requests. It is just the sum of all data points received by Amazon Managed Grafana.

Hide series

Hide series when all values of a series from a metric query are of a specific value.

• With only nulls – Value=null (default unchecked)

• With only zeroes – Value=zero (default unchecked)

Time regions

You can highlight specific time regions on the graph to make it easier to see, for example, weekends, business hours, and off-work hours. All configured time regions refer to UTC time.