What’s New in Grafana 6.4? Explore the Latest Features and Improvements
Grafana 6.4, released on October 2 2019, introduces a suite of enhancements—including Explore navigation, real‑time log viewing, new log panels, Data Link upgrades, Series Override line rendering, shared query results, an Alpine‑based Docker image, deprecation of PhantomJS, and the Alpha release of grafana‑toolkit—plus numerous UI and performance improvements.
On October 2, 2019, Grafana released version 6.4, focusing on enhancements to the data model, metric queries, and a range of new features.
Grafana 6.4 New Features
Explore : support for jumping to dashboard panels and improved real‑time log viewing.
Loki : display logs as annotations and enable Loki usage directly in dashboard panels.
Panel : added a new log panel and enhanced the Data Link functionality.
Graph : use Series Override to turn points into lines for single‑point series.
Dashboard : share query results across panels to avoid duplicate queries; partial query sharing is available in Alpha.
Plugin : grafana‑toolkit released in Alpha to simplify plugin development.
Rendering : PhantomJS deprecated; migrate to the Grafana image rendering plugin.
Docker : base image switched to Alpine 3.10, reducing security vulnerabilities.
The new Explore navigation adds a “return” arrow that brings users back to the previous dashboard, with an optional menu to retain changes made in Explore.
Log panels now include a pause button to stop live log updates, automatically pausing when scrolling up, and provide performance optimizations for higher‑throughput log streams.
Although the log panel supports real‑time logs, it is recommended to use this feature primarily in Explore. Sync logs via the page‑top refresh button; the log panel is currently in Beta and should be used cautiously.
Data Link, introduced in Grafana 6.3, creates dynamic links to external dashboards or systems. In 6.4, Data Link support expands from Graph panels to Gauge and Bar Gauge panels.
Code examples:
GraphGuageBar GuageSeries Override can transform single‑point series into horizontal lines by selecting Transform > constant.
Sharing query results across panels reduces resource consumption; the feature is in Alpha and must be enabled in the configuration file.
Grafana‑toolkit aims to simplify plugin development by handling environment setup, testing, and packaging.
PhantomJS, previously used for image rendering, is deprecated and will be removed in future releases; users should migrate to the Grafana image rendering plugin.
The Docker base image now uses Alpine 3.10, which eliminates known security vulnerabilities.
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Programmer DD
A tinkering programmer and author of "Spring Cloud Microservices in Action"
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