Configure a TestData data source for testing

Grafana ships with a TestData data source, which creates simulated time series data for any panel. You can use it to build your own fake and random time series data and render it in any panel, which helps you verify dashboard functionality and safely and easily share the data.

Configure the data source

To access the data source configuration for TestData

1. Choose the Configuration (gear) icon.

2. Choose Data Sources.

3. choose TestData.

The data source doesn’t provide any settings beyond the most basic options common to all data sources:

Name	Description
Name	The name of the data source in panels, queries, and Explore.
Default	Whether this datasource will be pre-selected for new panels.

Create mock data

Added the TestData data source, your Grafana instance’s users can use it as a data source in any metric panel, and it will provide mock data that you can use, based on the TestData scenario you choose.

Choose a scenario

Instead of providing a query editor, the TestData data source helps you select a Scenario that generates simulated data for panels.

You can assign an Alias to each scenario, and many have their own options that appear when selected.

Available scenarios:

• Annotations

• Conditional Error

• CSV Content

• CSV File

• CSV Metric Values

• Datapoints Outside Range

• Exponential heatmap bucket data

• Grafana API

• Grafana Live

• Linear heatmap bucket data

• Load Apache Arrow Data

• Logs

• No Data Points

• Node Graph

• Predictable CSV Wave

• Predictable Pulse

• Random Walk

• Random Walk (with error)

• Random Walk Table

• Raw Frames

• Simulation

• Slow Query

• Streaming Client

• Table Static

• USA generated data

Import a pre-configured dashboard

TestData also provides an example dashboard.

To import the example dashboard

1. Navigate to the data source’s configuration page.

2. Select the Dashboards tab.

3. Select Import for the Simple Streaming Example dashboard.

To customize an imported dashboard:

To customize the imported dashboard, we recommend that you save it under a different name. If you don’t, upgrading Grafana can overwrite the customized dashboard with the new version.

Use test data to report issues

If you report an issue to GrafanaLabs on GitHub involving the use or rendering of time series data, we strongly recommend that you use this data source to replicate the issue. That makes it much easier for the developers to replicate and solve your issue.