Extend your workspace with plugins - Amazon Managed Grafana
Plugin catalogManage pluginsInstall or remove a pluginUpdate a plugin

Extend your workspace with plugins

Grafana plugins add the ability to connect to new data sources, or add visualization or other functionality to the workspace. Broadly, plugins have three types:

  • Panel plugins – Panel plugins add new visualization types that are available for use in your dashboards. These define the rendering of the data in the frontend.

  • Data source plugins – Data source plugins communicate with external sources of data, and return the data in a format that Grafana can use.

  • App plugins – Applications, also known as app plugins. These include bundle data sources and panels, and can provide a cohesive experience within your Grafana workspace.

For Amazon Managed Grafana workspaces that support version 9 or newer, you can enable plugin management. This allows workspace admins to install or uninstall plugins from the plugin catalog.

Find plugins with the plugin catalog

Your Amazon Managed Grafana workspace includes a page that shows all of your installed plugins and a list of all plugins that are available to install in your workspace. This page is the plugin catalog. In addition to the plugins that are installed by default, you can install up to 50 more plugins.

The available plugins fall broadly into the following categories:

  • AWS Data Sources – This is an application plugin, provided by Amazon Managed Grafana, to easily discover AWS resources in your account. This is installed by default. For more information, see Use the AWS Data Sources plugin to find AWS data.

  • Core plugins – These plugins are provided by default in Grafana. They include popular data sources and panel visualizations. They are tagged as Core in the plugin catalog. These are installed by default and cannot be removed.

  • Enterprise plugins – These plugins are available to Grafana workspaces that have an enterprise license. These are not installed by default. They are tagged as Enterprise in the plugin catalog. They can only be installed if you have a valid enterprise license. For details about how to upgrade a workspace to an Enterprise license, see Managing your access to Amazon Managed Grafana Enterprise plugins.

  • Community plugins – These plugins are provided for Grafana workspaces from various sources, including Grafana Labs, AWS, and others. In Grafana workspaces that support version 9 or newer, these are not installed by default (earlier workspaces have some of these installed automatically). These are typically open source plugins. You can install or remove these plugins.

    Note

    Using community plugins is at your discretion. As part of the shared responsibility model between you and AWS, you are expected to understand what you are installing into your workspace for these third party plugins. You are also responsible for the plugins meeting your security needs.

Plugin support

Plugins come from a wide variety of sources, and support varies for them.

  • AWS Data Sources plugin – This plugin is provided by and supported by AWS.

  • Enterprise plugins – The Enterprise plugins are supported by both AWS and Grafana Labs—you can submit issues through either support team.

  • Core plugins – The core plugins and other plugins provided by AWS or Grafana Labs are supported in Amazon Managed Grafana by AWS. You can submit an issue in GitHub for bug-fixes or enhancements, or create a ticket with AWS or Grafana Labs.

  • Community plugins – Community plugins not created by AWS or Grafana Labs are typically supported through GitHub issues or other forums. Support information in those cases is included in the details for the plugin in the plugin catalog.

You can also submit issues for plugins through the GitHub forums for Amazon Managed Grafana or Grafana.

Plugin versions

Most plugins are updated on a regular cadence. The plugin catalog in a Amazon Managed Grafana workspace shows the most recent versions of a plugin, and you choose which version to install. When a plugin has an outdated version with a known security issue, the outdated version is removed from availability.

You can also update plugins that are already installed.

Note

Sometimes, a new version of a plugin is made available that fixes a security issue in an installed plugin. For severe issues, Amazon Managed Grafana might automatically update the plugin in your workspaces to the version with the fix.

Manage plugins with the plugin catalog

You manage the plugins for your Amazon Managed Grafana workspace from the plugin catalog. You can only install plugins that are listed in the plugin catalog within your workspace.

The following describes the prerequisites for using the plugin catalog, and how to find the plugin catalog.

Prerequisites

To view the plugin catalog

  1. Sign in to your Amazon Managed Grafana workspace.

  2. From the left menu, choose Administration, then Plugins. This opens the plugin catalog.

  3. By default, the plugin catalog lists the installed plugins. To view all available plugins, choose All under the State filter at the top of the catalog. Installed plugins include a tag that says Installed.

Install or remove a plugin

Note

You must meet the prerequisites from the preceding section, or you will not have permission to modify plugins.

To install or remove a Grafana plugin

  1. Go to the plugin catalog.

  2. By default, the plugin catalog lists the installed plugins only. To view all available plugins, choose All under the State filter at the top of the catalog. Installed plugins include a tag that says Installed.

  3. Select the plugin to install or uninstall. For example, if you want to remove the Datadog data source, select the Datadog plugin.

  4. On the plugin details page, choose the uninstall or install option.

  5. After a plugin is installed, it can take up to a few minutes before the change is synced across all parts of the workspace. It is good to wait a few minutes before using the new plugin.

Note

You can have 50 plugins installed in a workspace (beyond the default Core plugins).

Update a plugin

To update an existing Grafana plugin

  1. Sign in to your Amazon Managed Grafana workspace.

  2. From the left menu, choose Administration, then Plugins. This opens the plugin catalog, listing only the installed plugins.

  3. Select the plugin to update.

  4. On the plugin details page, check to see if there is an update available. If so, choose the option to update the plugin and choose the version to update to.

    Note

    If you see a note that you do not have permission to modify the plugin, confirm that plugin management is enabled for your workspace. You must also be an admin for the Amazon Managed Grafana workspace.