Grafana Dashboards

Dingo Grafana Dashboards

Monitoring dashboards for Dingo, the Go Cardano node by Blink Labs.

More information and resources on dashboards can be found here https://github.com/blinklabs-io/dingo/tree/main/docs/dashboards

Dashboards

Dashboard	File	Description
Node Overview	node-overview.json	At-a-glance header (epoch, slot, tip gap, density, blockfetch, mempool, KES, peers, storage, runtime), block height, epoch progress, forging stats
Block Production	block-production.json	Forge latency heatmap, block delay CDFs, forge rates, KES lifecycle
Peer Health	peer-health.json	Hot/warm/cold peers, connection types, peer state timeseries, promotions/demotions, network I/O
Mempool	mempool.json	Pending TXs, mempool size, TX lifecycle, CBOR cache, event bus
Resource Usage	resources.json	CPU, memory, GC heatmap, disk I/O, IOPS, PSI pressure, Badger, file descriptors

full-panel.json contains the standalone Business Text header panel for embedding into custom dashboards.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have:

• Grafana 12+ (tested on 12.4) — install guide
• Prometheus scraping your Dingo node on port 12798 (configured in step 2 below)
• Dingo node with metrics enabled (default port 12798)
• Business Text plugin — required by all dashboards for the header panel
• prometheus-node-exporter — required only by the Resource Usage dashboard for host-level CPU, memory, and disk metrics

Quick start

1. Install the Business Text plugin

Open a terminal on the machine running Grafana and run:

grafana-cli plugins install marcusolsson-dynamictext-panel
sudo systemctl restart grafana-server

If you are running Grafana in Docker or Kubernetes, set the environment variable instead:

GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=marcusolsson-dynamictext-panel

2. Configure Prometheus scrape targets

Prometheus needs to know where to find your Dingo node. Add the following to your prometheus.yml under scrape_configs:

- job_name: dingo
  scrape_interval: 15s
  static_configs:
    - targets: ['localhost:12798']

# Optional: required for Resource Usage dashboard
- job_name: node
  scrape_interval: 15s
  static_configs:
    - targets: ['localhost:9100']

Then reload Prometheus to apply the change:

sudo systemctl reload prometheus

3. Import dashboards

There are two ways to get the dashboards into Grafana.

Option A: Provisioning (recommended)

Provisioning automatically loads dashboards from files on disk. Grafana will pick them up on startup or within about 30 seconds if already running.

sudo cp docs/dashboards/provisioning.yaml /etc/grafana/provisioning/dashboards/dingo.yaml
sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/grafana/dashboards/dingo
sudo cp docs/dashboards/*.json /var/lib/grafana/dashboards/dingo/
sudo chown -R grafana:grafana /var/lib/grafana/dashboards/dingo/
sudo systemctl restart grafana-server

After restarting, go to Dashboards → Browse in the Grafana UI and search for “Dingo”. All five dashboards appear in a Dingo folder automatically.

Note: allowUiUpdates: true lets you edit dashboards in the Grafana UI, but changes will be overwritten on the next provision cycle (every 30 seconds). To make permanent edits, modify the JSON files directly.

Option B: Manual import

1. Open Grafana in your browser
2. Go to Dashboards → New → Import
3. Upload each JSON file
4. Select your Prometheus datasource when prompted

4. Alert rules (optional)

The alert rules file is ready to use as-is — no editing required.

Copy the file to your Prometheus rules directory:

sudo cp docs/dashboards/alerts.yaml /etc/prometheus/rules/dingo.yaml

Then add it to prometheus.yml:

rule_files:
  - /etc/prometheus/rules/dingo.yaml

Reload Prometheus:

sudo systemctl reload prometheus

Datasource

All dashboards expect a Prometheus datasource with UID prometheus. If your datasource has a different UID, update it before importing or recreate the datasource with UID prometheus.

Template variables

All dashboards include two template variables that auto-discover dingo instances:

Variable	Query	Purpose
$network	label_values(dingo_build_info, network)	Selects the Cardano network (preview, preprod, mainnet).
$instance	label_values(dingo_build_info{network="$network"}, instance)	Selects specific dingo instance(s). Multi-select with “All” default.

dingo_build_info is a metric only dingo exposes (includes network, version, commit labels). This ensures dropdowns show only dingo targets, never Haskell cardano-node.

All panel queries use {network="$network", instance=~"$instance"} as their selector.

The Resource Usage dashboard adds a third variable:

Variable	Query	Purpose
$node_instance	label_values(node_uname_info, instance)	Selects the node_exporter target for host-level metrics (CPU, memory, disk, network). node_exporter runs on a different port (default 9100) from the dingo metrics port, so it needs its own instance dropdown.

Set $node_instance to the hostname/port reported by your node_exporter scrape target (typically localhost:9100 or the host IP).

Navigation

Dashboard-level links at the top of each dashboard connect all 5 dashboards. Links preserve the selected time range and template variables.

Dormant metrics

Some metrics only emit when their feature is active. Panels display “No data” until activated:

Metric	Activates when
cardano_node_metrics_Forge_node_is_leader_int	Forging is enabled
cardano_node_metrics_Forge_adopted_int	Block is forged and adopted
dingo_metrics_blockForgingLatency_seconds_bucket	Block is forged
cardano_node_metrics_remainingKESPeriods_int	KES key is configured
dingo_forge_tip_gap_slots	Forging is enabled
dingo_database_size_bytes	Database stores are initialized
database_blob_*	Badger blob store is active

File listing

https://github.com/blinklabs-io/dingo/tree/main/docs/dashboards
  node-overview.json       Node Overview dashboard
  block-production.json    Block Production dashboard
  peer-health.json         Peer Health dashboard
  mempool.json             Mempool dashboard
  resources.json           Resource Usage dashboard
  full-panel.json          Business Text header panel (standalone)
  provisioning.yaml        Grafana provisioning config
  prometheus.yaml          Prometheus scrape config snippet
  alerts.yaml              Prometheus alert rules
  README.md                Source for this page

Troubleshooting

Business Text plugin not found / panels show “Panel plugin not found: marcusolsson-dynamictext-panel” Install the plugin (step 1 above) and restart Grafana. If running in a managed environment, add marcusolsson-dynamictext-panel to your GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS list.

Panels show “No data” Check that Prometheus is scraping your Dingo node: open Prometheus in the browser, go to Status → Targets, and confirm the dingo job is up. Also verify the $network and $instance template variables at the top of the dashboard are set to the correct values.

Datasource UID mismatch (“datasource not found”) All JSON files use the datasource UID prometheus. If your Prometheus datasource has a different UID, either rename it to prometheus in Connections → Data sources, or do a find-and-replace of "prometheus" with your actual UID in the JSON files before importing.

Dashboards not appearing after provisioning Confirm /etc/grafana/provisioning/dashboards/dingo.yaml references the correct path. Grafana auto-reloads provisioned dashboards every 30 seconds; if it hasn’t appeared after a minute, check the Grafana log (journalctl -u grafana-server) for errors.