OpenSearch Grafana Data Source

With the OpenSearch Grafana data source plugin, you can run many types of simple or complex OpenSearch queries to visualize logs or metrics stored in OpenSearch. You can also annotate your graphs with log events stored in OpenSearch. The OpenSearch Grafana data source plugin uses Piped Processing Language (PPL) and also supports AWS Sigv4 authentication for Amazon OpenSearch Service.

Adding the data source

1. Install the data source by following the instructions in the Installation tab of this plugin's listing page.
2. Open the side menu by clicking the Grafana icon in the top header.
3. In the side menu under the Connections link you should find a link named Data Sources.
4. Click the + Add data source button in the top header.
5. Search for OpenSearch in the search bar.

Note: If you're not seeing the Data Sources link in your side menu it means that you do not have the Admin role for the current organization.

Name	Description
Name	The data source name. This is how you refer to the data source in panels and queries.
Default	Default data source means that it will be pre-selected for new panels.
Url	The HTTP protocol, IP, and port of your OpenSearch server.
Access	Server (default) = URL needs to be accessible from the Grafana backend/server, Browser = URL needs to be accessible from the browser.

Access mode controls how requests to the data source will be handled. Server should be the preferred way if nothing else stated.

Server access mode (Default)

All requests will be made from the browser to Grafana backend/server which in turn will forward the requests to the data source and by that circumvent possible Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) requirements. The URL needs to be accessible from the grafana backend/server if you select this access mode.

Browser (Direct) access

Warning: Browser (Direct) access is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.

All requests will be made from the browser directly to the data source and may be subject to Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) requirements. The URL needs to be accessible from the browser if you select this access mode.

If you select Browser access you must update your OpenSearch configuration to allow other domains to access OpenSearch from the browser. You do this by specifying these two options in your opensearch.yml config file.

http.cors.enabled: true
http.cors.allow-origin: "*"

Index settings

Here you can specify a default for the time field and specify the name of your OpenSearch index. You can use a time pattern for the index name or a wildcard.

OpenSearch version

Be sure to click the Get Version and Save button. This is very important as there are differences on how queries are composed.

Min time interval

A lower limit for the auto group by time interval. Recommended to be set to write frequency, for example 1m if your data is written every minute. This option can also be overridden/configured in a dashboard panel under data source options. It's important to note that this value needs to be formatted as a number followed by a valid time identifier, e.g. 1m (1 minute) or 30s (30 seconds). The following time identifiers are supported:

Identifier	Description
y	year
M	month
w	week
d	day
h	hour
m	minute
s	second
ms	millisecond

Logs (BETA)

Only available in Grafana v6.3+.

There are two parameters, Message field name and Level field name, that can optionally be configured from the data source settings page that determine which fields will be used for log messages and log levels when visualizing logs in Explore.

For example, if you're using a default setup of Filebeat for shipping logs to OpenSearch the following configuration should work:

• Message field name: message
• Level field name: fields.level

Data links

Data links create a link from a specified field that can be accessed in logs view in Explore.

Each data link configuration consists of:

• Field - Name of the field used by the data link.
• URL/query - If the link is external, then enter the full link URL. If the link is internal link, then this input serves as query for the target data source. In both cases, you can interpolate the value from the field with ${__value.raw } macro.
• Internal link - Select if the link is internal or external. In case of internal link, a data source selector allows you to select the target data source. Only tracing data sources are supported.

Metric Query editor

The OpenSearch query editor allows you to select multiple metrics and group by multiple terms or filters. Use the plus and minus icons to the right to add/remove metrics or group by clauses. Some metrics and group by clauses haves options, click the option text to expand the row to view and edit metric or group by options.

Series naming and alias patterns

You can control the name for time series via the Alias input field.

Pattern	Description
{{term fieldname}}	replaced with value of a term group by
{{metric}}	replaced with metric name (ex. Average, Min, Max)
{{field}}	replaced with the metric field name

Pipeline metrics

Some metric aggregations are called Pipeline aggregations, for example, Moving Average and Derivative. OpenSearch pipeline metrics require another metric to be based on. Use the eye icon next to the metric to hide metrics from appearing in the graph. This is useful for metrics you only have in the query for use in a pipeline metric.

Templating

Instead of hard-coding things like server, application and sensor name in your metric queries you can use variables in their place. Variables are shown as dropdown select boxes at the top of the dashboard. These dropdowns make it easy to change the data being displayed in your dashboard.

Check out the Templating documentation for an introduction to the templating feature and the different types of template variables.

Query variable

The OpenSearch data source supports two types of queries you can use in the Query field of Query variables. The query is written using a custom JSON string.

Query	Description
{"find": "fields", "type": "keyword"}	Returns a list of field names with the index type keyword.
{"find": "terms", "field": "@hostname", "size": 1000}	Returns a list of values for a field using term aggregation. Query will use current dashboard time range as time range for query.
{"find": "terms", "field": "@hostname", "query": '<lucene query>'}	Returns a list of values for a field using term aggregation and a specified lucene query filter. Query will use current dashboard time range as time range for query.
{"find": "terms", "script": "if( doc['@hostname'].value == 'something' ) { return null; } else { return doc['@hostname']}", "query": '<lucene query>'}	Returns a list of values using term aggregation, the script API, and a specified lucene query filter. Query will use current dashboard time range as time range for query.

If the query is multi-field with both a text and keyword type, use "field":"fieldname.keyword" (sometimes fieldname.raw) to specify the keyword field in your query.

There is a default size limit of 500 on terms queries. Set the size property in your query to set a custom limit. You can use other variables inside the query. Example query definition for a variable named $host.

{"find": "terms", "field": "@hostname", "query": "@source:$source"}

In the above example, we use another variable named $source inside the query definition. Whenever you change, via the dropdown, the current value of the $source variable, it will trigger an update of the $host variable so it now only contains hostnames filtered by in this case the @source document property.

These queries by default return results in term order (which can then be sorted alphabetically or numerically as for any variable). To produce a list of terms sorted by doc count (a top-N values list), add an orderBy property of "doc_count". This automatically selects a descending sort; using "asc" with doc_count (a bottom-N list) can be done by setting order: "asc" but is discouraged as it "increases the error on document counts". To keep terms in the doc count order, set the variable's Sort dropdown to Disabled; you might alternatively still want to use e.g. Alphabetical to re-sort them.

{"find": "terms", "field": "@hostname", "orderBy": "doc_count"}

Using variables in queries

There are two syntaxes:

• $<varname> Example: @hostname:$hostname
• [[varname]] Example: @hostname:[[hostname]]

Why two ways? The first syntax is easier to read and write but does not allow you to use a variable in the middle of a word. When the Multi-value or Include all value options are enabled, Grafana converts the labels from plain text to a lucene compatible condition.

In the above example, we have a lucene query that filters documents based on the @hostname property using a variable named $hostname. It is also using a variable in the Terms group by field input box. This allows you to use a variable to quickly change how the data is grouped.

Annotations

Annotations allow you to overlay rich event information on top of graphs. You add annotation queries via the Dashboard menu / Annotations view. Grafana can query any OpenSearch index for annotation events.

Name	Description
Query	You can leave the search query blank or specify a lucene query.
Time	The name of the time field, needs to be date field.
Time End	Optional name of the time end field needs to be date field. If set, then annotations will be marked as a region between time and time-end.
Text	Event description field.
Tags	Optional field name to use for event tags (can be an array or a CSV string).

Querying Logs

Querying and displaying log data from OpenSearch is available in Explore, and in the logs panel in dashboards. Select the OpenSearch data source, and then optionally enter a lucene query to display your logs.

Piped Processing Language (PPL)

The OpenSearch plugin allows you to run queries using PPL. For more information on PPL syntax, refer to the OpenSearch documentation.

Log Queries

Once the result is returned, the log panel shows a list of log rows and a bar chart where the x-axis shows the time and the y-axis shows the frequency/count.

Note that the fields used for log message and level is based on an optional data source configuration.

Filter Log Messages

Optionally enter a lucene query into the query field to filter the log messages. For example, using a default Filebeat setup you should be able to use fields.level:error to only show error log messages.

Configure the data source with provisioning

It's now possible to configure data sources using config files with Grafana's provisioning system. You can read more about how it works and all the settings you can set for data sources on the provisioning docs page

Here is a provisioning example for this data source:

apiVersion: 1

datasources:
  - name: opensearch
    type: grafana-opensearch-datasource
    url: http://opensearch-cluster-master.opensearch.svc.cluster.local:9200
    basicAuthUser: grafana
    basicAuth: true
    version: 1
    jsonData:
      pplEnabled: false
      version: 2.16.0
      maxConcurrentShardRequests: 5
      flavor: "Opensearch"
      timeField: "@timestamp"
      logMessageField: log       # only applicable for logs
      logLevelField: level       # only applicable for logs
    secureJsonData:
      basicAuthPassword: ${GRAFANA_OPENSEARCH_PASSWORD}
    editable: true

Amazon OpenSearch Service

AWS users using Amazon's OpenSearch Service can use this data source to visualize OpenSearch data. If you are using an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policy to control access to your Amazon OpenSearch Service domain, then you must use AWS Signature Version 4 (AWS SigV4) to sign all requests to that domain. For more details on AWS SigV4, refer to the AWS documentation.

AWS Signature Version 4 authentication

Note: Only available in Grafana v7.3+.

In order to sign requests to your Amazon OpenSearch Service domain, SigV4 can be enabled in the Grafana configuration.

Once AWS SigV4 is enabled, it can be configured on the OpenSearch data source configuration page. Refer to AWS authentication for more information about authentication options.

IAM policies for OpenSearch Service

Grafana needs permissions granted via IAM to be able to read OpenSearch Service documents. You can attach these permissions to IAM roles and utilize Grafana's built-in support for assuming roles. Note that you will need to configure the required policy before adding the data source to Grafana.

Depending on the source of the data you'd query with OpenSearch, you may need different permissions. AWS provides some predefined policies that you can check here.

This is an example of a minimal policy you can use to query OpenSearch Service.

NOTE: Update the ARN of the OpenSearch Service resource to match your domain.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["es:ESHttpGet", "es:ESHttpPost"],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:es:{region}:123456789012:domain/{domain_name}"
    }
  ]
}

Amazon OpenSearch Serverless

Note: OpenSearch Serverless support is only available in Grafana v9.4+.

Access to OpenSearch Serverless data is controlled by data access policies. These policies can be created via the Console or aws-cli.

Data access policies for OpenSearch Serverless

The following example shows a policy that allows users to query the collection_name collection and the index_name index.

NOTE: Make sure to substitute the correct values for collection_name, index_name, and Principal.

[
  {
    "Rules": [
      {
        "Resource": ["collection/{collection_name}"],
        "Permission": ["aoss:DescribeCollectionItems"],
        "ResourceType": "collection"
      },
      {
        "Resource": ["index/{collection_name}/{index_name}"],
        "Permission": ["aoss:DescribeIndex", "aoss:ReadDocument"],
        "ResourceType": "index"
      }
    ],
    "Principal": ["arn:aws:iam:{region}:123456789012:user/{username}"],
    "Description": "read-access"
  }
]

Traces Support

OpenSearch plugin has support for viewing a list of traces in table form, and a single trace in Trace View, which shows the timeline of trace spans

Note: Querying OpenSearch Traces is only available using Lucene queries

How to make a trace query using the query editor:

1. View all traces:
   • Query (Lucene) leave blank
   • Lucene Query Type: Traces
   • Rerun the query
   • If necessary, select Table visualization type
   • Clicking on a trace ID in the table opens that trace in the Explore panel Trace View
2. View Single trace
   • Query: traceId: {traceId}
   • Lucene Query Type: Traces
   • Rerun the query
   • If necessary, select Traces visualization type

Service Map

Version 2.15.0 of the OpenSearch plugin introduces support for visualizing Service Map for Open Search traces ingested with Data Prepper.

Note: Service Map for OpenSearch plugin doesn't yet support querying Jaeger trace data stored in OpenSearch in raw form (without Data Prepper)

Service map in Grafana enables customers to view a map of their applications built using microservices architecture. With this map, customers can easily detect performance issues, or increase in error rates in any of their services.

Each service in the map is represented by a circle (node). Numbers on the inside show average latency per service and average throughput per minute. Borders around the node represent error and success rates of operations targeting that service. Clicking on any node opens a dialogue with all the metrics in one place.

Requests between services are represented by arrows between the nodes. Clicking on any arrow opens a dialogue that lists all operations that are involved in the requests between the two services.

Visualizing service map data is available for

• all traces within a time range defined in Grafana
• a single trace when querying traceId

Visualizing service map data:

1. For all traces in a time range:
   • Query (Lucene) leave blank
   • Lucene Query Type: Traces
   • Toggle Service Map on
   • Run the query
   • in Explore view, the Node Graph visualization will appear alongside the table of traces
   • if querying from a dashboard panel, select Node Graph from the list of visualizations
2. For one trace
   • Query: traceId: {traceId}
   • Lucene Query Type: Traces
   • Toggle Service Map on
   • Run the query
   • in Explore view, the Node Graph visualization will appear alongside the Trace visualization
   • if querying from a dashboard panel, select Node Graph from the list of visualizations

Note: Note that querying service map data requires sending additional queries to OpenSearch.