Provisioning makes a Grafana instance reproducible and disposable. Data sources go in provisioning/datasources/*.yml, dashboards in provisioning/dashboards/*.yml pointing at a folder of dashboard JSON. Provisioned objects are read-only in the UI, which prevents drift. For full GitOps you can also manage dashboards with the Terraform grafana provider or Grafonnet.

Code Example

apiVersion: 1
datasources:
  - name: Prometheus
    type: prometheus
    access: proxy
    url: http://prometheus:9090
    isDefault: true

💡

Interview Tip

Mention that provisioned resources are immutable in the UI — a feature, not a limitation.

grafanaprovisioninggitops

New to Grafana? Start with the Grafana: Zero to Hero guide.

Read the tutorial →

How do you provision Grafana data sources and dashboards as code?

More Grafana questions