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Basic Walkthrough

Overview

This guide demonstrates how to create a simple dashboard with Helm.

The tutorial assumes that you have:

  • an instance of Grafana with the Helm application installed.

  • an instance of OpenNMS that is reachable from the Grafana instance above.

  • one or mode nodes being monitored by OpenNMS.

Application Setup

In this section, you will enable the Helm application in Grafana.

  1. Navigate to the home page of your Grafana instance. In the top-left corner of the page, click on the Grafana icon, and then click Plugins:

    Plugins

  2. Next, navigate to the Apps tab, and click on the OpenNMS Helm application.

    If the OpenNMS Helm is application is not listed on the Apps tab, try restarting the Grafana server. If the issue persists, make sure the application is installed correctly.

  3. Enable the application by clicking on the Enable button.

    If you see a Disable button, then the application is already enabled and you can skip to the next step.

Custom Actions

In the Helm Config tab, you can add custom actions. These will (currently) show when you right-click an alarm in an alarm table.

Custom action URLs may contain $variables that reference properties of an OpenNMS alarm. A list of the available properties can be seen at the OpenNMS.js documentation.

Special case: event parameters on the alarm can be accessed either by index ($parameters[1]) or by name ($parameters[reason]).

If a variable can’t be matched against the row, the action will not appear in the context menu.

Variables will be URL-encoded when they are injected into the URL.

Custom Actions
Figure 1. Create action URLs using parameters.

Data Source Setup

In this section, you will configure the Entities data source.

  1. Navigate to the home page of your Grafana instance. In the top-left corner of the page, click on the Grafana icon, and then click Data Sources:

    Data Sources

  2. Next, click on Add data source.

  3. In the Name field enter: My First OpenNMS DS.

  4. Change the Type to OpenNMS Entities.

  5. In the Url field enter the URL to your OpenNMS instance i.e. http://localhost:8980/opennms.

    The URL to your OpenNMS instance should normally end with /opennms.

  6. Click the checkbox next to Basic Auth.

  7. Enter the credentials for an OpenNMS user in the User and Password fields.

  8. Click the Add button.

    Data source is working

If the data source is configured correctly you should see a message indicating that the Data source is working. If the message indicates a failure, review the information that was entered and click Save & Test to test the data source again.

Dashboard Setup

  1. Create a new Dashboard by click on the dashboard selector at the top of the page, and the clicking on New Dashboard.

    New Dashboard

  2. Add a new Alarm Table panel to either a new or an existing row.

  3. Edit the Alarm Table panel, by click on the panel title, and then clicking Edit.

    Edit Panel

  4. Navigate to Metrics tab and select the data source we previously created in the Panel Data Source selection.

  5. Navigate to the Options tab, click the + next to Columns and select IP Address from the list.

  6. Return to the dashboard view by clicking Back to dashboard near the top of the screen.

  7. Save the dashboard by clicking the disk icon near the top of the screen, enter a name, and click Save.

That’s it! Now, you have your first dashboard. Try changing the time range at the top right of the screen, or try performing actions against the alarms by right on any of the alarm rows.