Grafana Azure Deployment Skill

Deploy Grafana OSS to Azure Container Apps using Bicep and Azure Developer CLI (azd).

Reproducibility Verified: This deployment has been tested multiple times from scratch. Deploy time: ~2 minutes.

Overview

Grafana is an open-source observability platform for metrics, logs, and traces visualization. This skill deploys Grafana OSS (not Azure Managed Grafana) to Azure Container Apps.

Architecture

code

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                  Resource Group                         │
│  ┌─────────────────┐    ┌─────────────────────────────┐ │
│  │ Log Analytics   │───▶│ Container Apps Environment  │ │
│  │ Workspace       │    │                             │ │
│  └─────────────────┘    │  ┌───────────────────────┐  │ │
│                         │  │ Grafana Container App │  │ │
│                         │  │ - Port 3000           │  │ │
│                         │  │ - SQLite (default)    │  │ │
│                         │  │ - Scale 0-3 replicas  │  │ │
│                         │  └───────────────────────┘  │ │
│                         └─────────────────────────────┘ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Quick Start (Verified)

bash

# 1. Register providers (one-time per subscription)
az provider register --namespace Microsoft.App
az provider register --namespace Microsoft.OperationalInsights

# 2. Create environment
azd env new my-grafana-env

# 3. Set required variables
azd env set AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID "$(az account show --query id -o tsv)"
azd env set AZURE_LOCATION "westus"
azd env set GRAFANA_ADMIN_PASSWORD "$(openssl rand -base64 16)"

# 4. Deploy (~2 minutes)
azd up

# 5. Access Grafana
azd env get-value GRAFANA_URL
# Login: admin / <your GRAFANA_ADMIN_PASSWORD>

Deployment time breakdown:

•Resource Group: ~4s
•Log Analytics: ~25s
•Container Apps Environment: ~38s
•Grafana Container App: ~10s
•Total: ~2 minutes

Parameters

Parameter	Description	Default	Required
`environmentName`	Environment name (used for resource naming)	-	Yes
`location`	Azure region	westus	No
`grafanaImage`	Container image	docker.io/grafana/grafana:latest	No
`grafanaAdminUser`	Admin username	admin	No
`grafanaAdminPassword`	Admin password	-	Yes

Environment Variables

Grafana is configured via environment variables in the Container App:

Variable	Description	Value
`GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_USER`	Admin username	From parameter
`GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD`	Admin password	From secret
`GF_SERVER_HTTP_PORT`	HTTP port	3000
`GF_SERVER_ROOT_URL`	Public URL	Auto-configured
`GF_AUTH_ANONYMOUS_ENABLED`	Anonymous access	false

See config/environment-variables.md for full list.

Health Probes

Type	Path	Port	Interval
Liveness	/api/health	3000	30s
Readiness	/api/health	3000	10s
Startup	/api/health	3000	10s (30 failures allowed)

Outputs

After deployment:

•GRAFANA_URL: Public HTTPS URL
•GRAFANA_FQDN: Container App FQDN
•GRAFANA_ADMIN_USER: Admin username

Verification

bash

# Health check
curl https://<GRAFANA_FQDN>/api/health

# Admin login test
curl -u admin:YourPassword https://<GRAFANA_FQDN>/api/org

Scaling

•Min replicas: 0 (scale to zero when idle)
•Max replicas: 3
•Scaling rule: HTTP concurrent requests (10 per replica)

Storage Considerations

By default, Grafana uses SQLite which stores data in the container. For production:

•Add Azure Files for persistent storage
•Or use PostgreSQL/MySQL backend

Tear Down

bash

azd down --force --purge

Note: Teardown takes 3-5 minutes (Container Apps environment deletion is slow).

Comparison with n8n Deployment

Aspect	Grafana	n8n
Database	SQLite (default)	PostgreSQL (required)
Port	3000	5678
Resources	0.5 CPU, 1GB RAM	1 CPU, 2GB RAM
Complexity	Simple	Moderate
Deploy Time	~2 minutes	~5 minutes

Troubleshooting

See troubleshooting.md for common issues and lessons learned.