Grafana Azure Deployment Skill

Deploy Grafana OSS to Azure Container Apps using Bicep and Azure Developer CLI (azd).

Reproducibility Verified: This deployment has been tested multiple times from scratch. Deploy time: ~2 minutes.

Overview

Grafana is an open-source observability platform for metrics, logs, and traces visualization. This skill deploys Grafana OSS (not Azure Managed Grafana) to Azure Container Apps.

Prerequisites and Portability

Require Azure CLI, Azure Developer CLI 1.28.0 or later, and Node.js LTS or later for portable verification. Don't require OpenSSL, Bash command substitution, or host-specific shell scripts. See ../../../docs/tool-installation.md.

Critical: Infrastructure Generation

This skill provides Grafana-specific configuration only. Infrastructure (Bicep, azure.yaml) should be generated fresh each time by the official azure-prepare → azure-validate → azure-deploy pipeline. Do NOT rely on pre-existing infra code.

Critical: Subscription Context

ALWAYS set AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID explicitly before running azd up. Read it with az account show --query id -o tsv, then pass the returned value to azd env set AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID <subscription-id>.

Without this, azd and Azure MCP tools will fail silently or produce incomplete deployments. The azure_deploy_app_logs tool also requires subscription context.

Critical: Bicep Output Naming

Bicep outputs MUST use SCREAMING_SNAKE_CASE (e.g., GRAFANA_URL, GRAFANA_FQDN) for azd to map them into environment values. Without this, azd env get-value returns "key not found".

Architecture

graph TB
    subgraph RG["Azure Resource Group"]
        LA["Log Analytics Workspace"]
        subgraph CAE["Container Apps Environment"]
            GF["Grafana Container App<br/>Port 3000 · SQLite (default)<br/>Scale 0-3 replicas"]
        end
    end

    LA -->|logs & metrics| CAE

Quick Start (Verified)

# 1. Register providers (one-time per subscription)
az provider register --namespace Microsoft.App
az provider register --namespace Microsoft.OperationalInsights

# 2. Create environment
azd env new my-grafana-env

# 3. Set required variables (replace placeholders)
azd env set AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID "<subscription-id>"
azd env set AZURE_LOCATION "westus"
azd env set GRAFANA_ADMIN_PASSWORD "<securely-generated-secret>"

# 4. Deploy (~2 minutes)
azd up

# 5. Access Grafana
azd env get-value GRAFANA_URL
# Login: admin / <your GRAFANA_ADMIN_PASSWORD>

Deployment time breakdown:

• Resource Group: ~4s
• Log Analytics: ~25s
• Container Apps Environment: ~38s
• Grafana Container App: ~10s
• Total: ~2 minutes

Environment Variables

Grafana is configured via environment variables in the Container App:

See config/environment-variables.md for full list.

Health Probes

Outputs

After deployment:

• GRAFANA_URL: Public HTTPS URL
• GRAFANA_FQDN: Container App FQDN
• GRAFANA_ADMIN_USER: Admin username

Verification

Run the checked-in verifier from the repository root:

node .github/scripts/verify-grafana.mjs

The verifier reads GRAFANA_URL through azd, requires HTTP 200 from /api/health, asserts database: "ok", and prints the deployment URL. Verify authenticated browser login separately with the deployed admin credentials. Retrieve a generated password only in a private terminal, and never print or paste it into the agent session or shared logs.

Scaling

• Min replicas: 0 (scale to zero when idle)
• Max replicas: 3
• Scaling rule: HTTP concurrent requests (10 per replica)

Storage Considerations

By default, Grafana uses SQLite which stores data in the container. For production:

1. Add Azure Files for persistent storage
2. Or use PostgreSQL/MySQL backend

Tear Down

azd down --force --purge

Note: Teardown takes 3-5 minutes (Container Apps environment deletion is slow).

Azure MCP Tools

Use these Azure MCP Server tools for Grafana deployments:

Troubleshooting

See troubleshooting.md for common issues and lessons learned.