Visualizing Redis in Grafana: Quick Start with the Redis Data Source Plugin

Preface

Grafana is a popular open‑source monitoring tool. The new Redis Data Source for Grafana plugin enables visualization of RedisTimeSeries data and core Redis data types such as Strings, Hash, and Sets, as well as parsing and displaying outputs of Redis management commands like SLOWLOG GET, INFO, and CLIENT LIST.

Grafana is a popular open‑source monitoring tool for building interactive dashboards to track application and infrastructure performance.

Getting Started with the Redis Data Source Plugin

The plugin can connect to any Redis database, including open‑source Redis, Redis Enterprise, and Redis Enterprise Cloud, and works with Grafana 7.0 and later. If you already have Grafana 7.0, install it via the grafana‑cli command: grafana-cli plugins install redis-datasource If you don’t have Grafana installed, you can quickly start with a Docker container:

docker run -d -p 3000:3000 --name=grafana -e "GF_INSTALL_PLUGINS=redis-datasource" grafana/grafana

Configuring the Redis Data Source in Grafana is straightforward: besides server address and port, you can also set database password and TLS connection options.

After initial configuration, you can start creating panels to display Redis data. The plugin supports three command types: Redis commands, RedisTimeSeries commands, and generic input.

Redis Commands include predefined commands to retrieve core data types such as Hashes, Sets, Strings, Stream, etc. The output is pre‑formatted for Grafana. This mode also supports management commands like SLOWLOG GET, INFO, and CLIENT LIST, whose outputs can be transformed using Grafana transformations.

RedisTimeSeries Commands provide an interface to the RedisTimeSeries module. Currently, two commands are supported: TS.RANGE and TS.MRANGE, allowing queries over one or multiple time‑series ranges.

Generic Input allows execution of other commands not covered by the previous modes. Note that generic input does not support all Redis commands and its output is not pre‑formatted for Grafana, so some features may not work.

Generic input does not support all Redis commands.

Outputs are not pre‑formatted, which may limit Grafana functionality.

Real‑time Monitoring with the INFO Command

Before starting, install the Redis Monitoring Dashboard and explore it.

The monitoring dashboard uses parts of the INFO command combined with Grafana transformations. It also includes a SLOWLOG panel to quickly identify slow queries affecting Redis performance, and a CLIENT LIST panel to display client connection information.

Conclusion

Using the Redis Data Source plugin in Grafana opens endless possibilities; future posts will share more dashboard examples, including a fun geeky weather app. Stay tuned!