How to parametrize dashboard in Grafana

How to use $DS_PROMETHEUS and don’t get error ‘not found’

The problem I’ve just solved was to use $DS_PROMETHEUS as datasource for a provisioned dashboard.

I’ve looked at node-exporter, thought a bit and found solution.

You need two additional sections in your dashboard json file:

__inputs

  "__inputs": [
    {
      "name": "DS_PROMETHEUS",
      "label": "prometheus",
      "description": "",
      "type": "datasource",
      "pluginId": "prometheus",
      "pluginName": "Prometheus"
    }
  ],

templating

You need to add this piece into templating.list (e.g. after “list”, into … well, the list.

  "templating": {
    "list": [
      {
        "current": {
          "selected": false,
          "text": "default",
          "value": "default"
        },
        "hide": 0,
        "includeAll": false,
        "label": "datasource",
        "multi": false,
        "name": "DS_PROMETHEUS",
        "options": [],
        "query": "prometheus",
        "refresh": 1,
        "regex": "",
        "skipUrlSync": false,
        "type": "datasource"
      },

(I’m showing it with templating.list part to help to find where to put it).

You also need to replace all datasources to this:

        "datasource": {
          "type": "prometheus",
          "uid": "${DS_PROMETHEUS}"
        },

But if you found this article, you already know about it.