Install Grafana on Ubuntu

What is Grafana?

Grafana is a free tool that draws charts and dashboards from your data. A dashboard is one screen with many charts, like the dials in a car. People use Grafana to watch how a server is doing, such as how busy its processor is.

Steps

1. Log in to your server with SSH. SSH lets you type commands on a remote computer.
2. Install the helper tools.

   apt update
   apt install -y apt-transport-https software-properties-common wget gnupg

3. Create a folder for the signing key. The key proves the software is real.

   mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings

4. Download and save the Grafana key.

   wget -q -O - https://apt.grafana.com/gpg.key | gpg --dearmor | tee /etc/apt/keyrings/grafana.gpg > /dev/null

5. Add the Grafana software source.

   echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/grafana.gpg] https://apt.grafana.com stable main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grafana.list

   This tells Ubuntu where to find Grafana.
6. Refresh the list and install Grafana.

   apt update
   apt install -y grafana

7. Start Grafana and make it start again after every reboot.

   systemctl enable --now grafana-server

8. Check that it is running.

   systemctl status grafana-server

9. If a firewall is on, allow port 3000. A port is like a numbered door into your server. For example, with UFW:

   ufw allow 3000/tcp

10. Open a browser and go to http://YOUR-SERVER-IP:3000. Use the IP address from your welcome email.
11. Log in with the user name admin and the password admin.
12. Grafana asks you to set a new password. Choose a strong one.

Quick recap

• Grafana turns data into charts.
• Add the Grafana software source and install with apt.
• Start it with systemctl enable --now grafana-server.
• Open port 3000 in your browser and change the default password.