

Show HN: Giraffe - dashboard for graphite - gingerlime
http://kenhub.github.com/giraffe/

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moxie
This looks great. I use a modified version of gdash, but always wish that the
graphs were rendered in D3 instead.

At first glance, it seems like the configuration could be a little more
expressive for some common use cases. For instance, it seems pretty typical to
build graphs that are collections of stats from different regions/instances
from a set of metrics that have the form:
stats.<machine/region>.specific_stat.

One nice thing about gdash is the ability to define a list of
instances/regions and their readable name mappings, which you can then easily
build multiple graphs for different stats using.

Seems like that'd be a little trickier here.

~~~
gingerlime
That's an interesting idea. I'd have to take a closer look at the gdash dsl
and see if I can borrow/steal some ideas.

Can you please explain the difference between this and using the built-in
graphite target wildcards? e.g. you can specify

    
    
      stats.*.specific_stat

and graphite (and giraffe) will output all matching targets for you. Another
alternative is

    
    
      stats.{one,another}.specific_stat 
    

Those work 'out-of-the-box' with graphite and giraffe currently. Or are you
talking about something different?

~~~
moxie
I need to be able to define consistent labels and colors for machines across
multiple graphs. So a machine named 'uk' is always displayed 'London' in dark
green, consistently across all graphs.

~~~
gingerlime
hmmm... I can see why this would be useful. Not entirely sure how is best to
implement such a thing. Perhaps it's better to open a github issue so this can
be discussed properly rather than here?

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flexd
While this looks cool, what the obsession with making new Graphite dashboards
recently? Everyone seems to be making one.

~~~
gingerlime
Can't comment for everyone, but as I tried to explain why on the readme:
Essentially, none of the existing dashboards did exactly what we wanted, and
it was fun to try to build something different. The task was made easier by
using some elements and ideas from at least some of the existing dashboards,
like tasseo, gdash and graphene (each worth a look in its own right and they
might be more suitable for some people).

------
gingerlime
Happy to answer any questions about the project and would love to get some
feedback.

~~~
hack_edu
Looks great! We've been having a rough time keeping our homegrown dashboard
stable. My only suggestion so far is to build out the
configuration/installation docs in the README.md, 'see dashboard.js' isn't
very helpful.

~~~
gingerlime
Thanks for the suggestion. I think (or hope) that the config in dashboards.js
_is_ reasonably easy to follow, and to use giraffe you'd have to edit it
anyway. So the info is right there when you need it. However, I can see that
this might not be that clear on first sight.

~~~
hack_edu
Looking at it more, it seems pretty easy, but perhaps consider that your
audience might only have a cursory knowledge of their Graphite implementation.
Maybe point to a couple of the important fields in dashboards.js, like
_graphite_url_ and the bits inside _metrics_?

~~~
gingerlime
That sounds like a sensible idea. Thanks. I'll try to update the readme soon
with perhaps a short snippet from dashboards.js.

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NielsH
Great one. Keep up the good work.

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tcmb
nice work, and +1 for the name ;)

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nezza-_-
*geraffe.

Oh wait, this is not reddit.

