Need documentation for --labels

[slater0013]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
--labels is included in grafana cmd tool but not (yet) documented on the new documentation website

Describe the solution you'd like
Is it related to "multi-tenancy" as described here ? https://github.com/NetApp/harvest/wiki/FAQ#harvest-authentication-and-permissions

Additional context
We would like to offer a multi organization Grafana server. Each organization have access to specific dashboards restricted to one specific SVM.

We used to create Orgs/Users/Datasources and restricted dashboards with Harvest 1.6 via Grafana API ! My goal here would be to use the grafana cmd tool to import specific dashboards (with --directory parameter) to a specific Organization (with --token parameter) with an organization specific datasource (with --datasource parameter)

Last interrogation is how to restrict the dashboard variables values to a specific SVM and could --labels parameter help ?

Thanks,
GS.

[cgrinds]

hi @slater0013

You're right, we can document this arg better. Let me describe it first and then we can talk about the multi-org Grafana server part second.

The grafana import --labels goes hand in hand with a poller's Labels section described here that offers a way to add additional key-value pairs to a poller's metrics.

the CLI args for bin/grafana import describe the argument like so:

bin/harvest grafana import --help

Truncated output

Flags:
  -a, --addr string           Address of Grafana server (IP, FQDN or hostname) (default "http://127.0.0.1:3000")
      --config string         harvest config file path (default "./harvest.yml")
  -s, --datasource string     Grafana datasource for the dashboards (default "Prometheus")
  -d, --directory string      When importing, import dashboards from this local directory.
                              When exporting, local directory to write dashboards to
  -h, --help                  help for import
  -S, --https                 Use HTTPS
  -k, --insecure              Allow insecure server connections when using SSL
      --labels strings        For each label, create a variable and add as chained query to other variables

When you run bin/harvest grafana import, you may optionally pass a set of labels like so:

bin/harvest grafana import --labels org --labels dept

This causes Harvest on dashboard import to:

1. Parse each dashboard, and add a new variable for each label passed on the cmd line
2. Modify existing dashboard variables to use the new label variable(s) in a chained query.

Here's an example:

bin/harvest grafana import --labels "org,dept"

Adds the Org and Dept variables like so and modifies the existing variables as shown here.

Results in

We used to create Orgs/Users/Datasources and restricted dashboards with Harvest 1.6 via Grafana API

If you had something that worked earlier, we should be able to help you find a solution for Harvest 2 also.

[slater0013]

Ok ! I understand It better now ! Thanks for the explanation ! Could be interesting to create a multi-tenant based on clusters.

My previous workflow coded in Netapp Workflow Automation was to create for each "client" :

• An org. in Grafana
• A datasource (since each org. have to configure his own datasource)
• A user account with the Viewer role in the freshly created org.
• An apikey for the org.

Last action was to modify json dashboards on-the-fly (by changing SVM variable with a fixed value and not a query anymore) and import them into the Org using the apikey.

Result : client "ABC" have access to Grafana with "ABC" account and is able to browse a few dashboards filtered to his own SVM.

I know that "clever" users could use the Grafana API to get rid of the dashbaords variable filtering but this is acceptable in our context.

Regards,
GS

[slater0013]

@cgrinds would you prefer another issue/case so we can talk about multi-tenancy ?

[cgrinds]

Let's discuss it in #2030 and I'm going to leave this issue open until I get a chance to update the docs with the detail in #1991 (comment)