Self-host Grafana
The standard open-source dashboarding and visualization layer for metrics, logs, and traces, querying Prometheus, Loki, and dozens of other data sources.
Key facts
Reach for Grafana when you already have metrics or logs somewhere (Prometheus, Loki, ClickHouse, a dozen others) and need the dashboarding and alerting layer on top — it's the standard, not a full observability stack by itself. If you want metrics collection too, pair it with Prometheus rather than looking for that inside Grafana.
Follow the Grafana deploy guide →What you need
- Any VPS with at least 1024 MB of RAM
- A domain you control — most self-hosted setups need HTTPS in front of them
- Under an hour if you've used Docker before
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Install
Run these commands on your server:
# Grafana — official OSS Docker image
docker run -d -p 3000:3000 --name=grafana grafana/grafana-oss # → http://SERVER_IP:3000What you take on
Grafana is the easy part of a self-hosted observability stack; the caveats are mostly about what it doesn't do alone:
An alternative to
Head-to-head
The full observability platform vs. the zero-config real-time agent.
Not really rivals — the metrics database vs. the dashboard layer.
One integrated OTel app vs. the dashboard layer you build a stack around.
