Setup and Configuration

Grizzly can be configured in two ways: using environment variables and through Grizzly’s own ‘context’ support (much like kubectl contexts).

Environment variables are suitable for use against a single system, and best suited to CI and automation scenarios.

Grizzly contexts allow easy switching between multiple configurations and are best suited to workstation use.

Using Grizzly Contexts

By default, the default context is used. We will discuss how to use the default context first, then explain how to use multiple contexts thereafter.

NOTE: If you have used Grizzly previously with environment variables, you can initialise the default context from your environment simply with grr config import. Also note, after importing, remember to unset your environment variables, as they take precendence over contexts and will thus prevent access to your context configurations.

Settings can be configured via Grizzly itself, using grr config set. They are stored in an OS specific location.

Grafana Itself

Grizzly interacts with Grafana via its REST API. For this, you will need to establish authentication credentials.

grr config set grafana.url http://localhost:3000 # URL for the root of your Grafana instance
grr config set grafana.user admin # (Optional) Username if using basic auth
grr config set grafana.token abcd12345 # Service account token (or basic auth password)

Grafana Cloud Prometheus

To interact with Grafana Cloud Prometheus (aka Mimir), use these settings:

grr config set mimir.address https://mimir.example.com # URL for Mimir instance or Grafana Cloud Prometheus instance
grr config set mimir.tenant-id myTenant # Tenant ID for your Grafana Cloud Prometheus account
grr config set mimir.api-key abcdef12345 # Authentication token (if you are using Grafana Cloud)

Notes

• Be sure to set api-key when you need to interact with Grafana Cloud.

Grafana Synthetic Monitoring

To interact with Grafana Synthetic Monitoring, you must configure the below settings:

grr config set synthetic-monitoring.access-token abcdef123456
grr config set synthetic-monitoring.url https://synthetic-monitoring-api.grafana.net

You can find the URL and access token in the Synthetic Monitoring plugin’s config page in Grafana.

Configuring Targets

Grizzly supports a number of resource types (grr providers will list those supported). Often, however, we do not wish to use all of these types. It is possible to set a list of “target” resource types that Grizzly should interact with:

grr config set targets Dashboard,DashboardFolder

These can be overriden on the command line with the -t or --target flag.

Configuring Output Formats

Grizzly, when retrieving resources from Grafana, can present them in a range of formats. Currently, it supports YAML and JSON. Default is YAML. It can be configured in contexts:

grr config set output-format json

This can be overridden on the command line with -o or --output.

Also, Grizzly wraps resources into an “envelope” that provides a consistent way of specifying typing and metadata, following Kubernetes' lead. This envelope can be removed with the only-spec setting:

grr config set only-spec true

This can be overridden on the command line with -s (to only include the spec component) or --only-spec=false to disable this setting (if currently set in the context).

Contexts

Grizzly supports multiple contexts allowing easy swapping between instances. By default, Grizzly uses the default context.

[Optional] If you have environment variables configured, you can import these into the default context like so:

grr config import

Create a new context with:

grr config create-context production

To list existing contexts:

grr config get-contexts

To show the currently selected context:

grr config current-context

To switch to a different context:

grr config use-context staging

To see the config for a context, these options are available:

grr config get
grr config get grafana
grr config get grafana.url

After selecting a different context, all future grr invocations will use the credentials and settings in this new context, whether grr apply to apply resources or grr config set to set configuration values.

Configuring Grizzly with environment variables

In some circumstances (e.g. when used within automated pipelines) it makes sense to configure Grizzly directly with environment variables as opposed to contexts. Environment variables, when set, take precedence over Grizzly contexts as described above. Below are the variables that can be used for this.

See Grafana’s Authentication API docs for more info.

Grafana Cloud Prometheus

To interact with Grafana Cloud Prometheus, you must have these environment variables set:

Note, this will also work with other Mimir installations, alongside Grafana Cloud Prometheus.

Grafana Synthetic Monitoring

To interact with Grafana Synthetic Monitoring, you must have these environment variable set:

Your stack ID is the number at the end of the url when you view your Grafana instance details, ie. grafana.com/orgs/myorg/stacks/123456 would be 123456. Your metrics and logs ID’s are the User when you view your Prometheus or Loki instance details in Grafana Cloud. You can find your instance URL under your Synthetic Monitoring configuration.

Grizzly configuration file

To get the path of the config file:

grr config path

Other Configurations

Timeouts

Grizzly has a 10 second timeout on some HTTP calls. To override this behavior, use the GRIZZLY_HTTP_TIMEOUT=<seconds> environment variable.

HTTP PROXY

To use a proxy with Grizzly, you must have the following environment variable set: