---
title: Integrating OpenShift 4 with External Grafana
url: https://devopstales.github.io/kubernetes/openshift4-monitoringw-with-external-grafana/
date: 2024-02-20
keywords: openshift 4.2, openshift okd4, openshift container platform, rad hat openshift, prometheus, grafana
---



In this Post I will show you how you how you can integrate an external Grafana with OpenShift 4 Prometheus.
<!--more-->

OpenShift already has its built-in monitoring stack with Prometheus, Grafana, and Alertmanager. It’s useful for monitoring a single cluster, but in the case of multiple clusters, you may want to get a single point of view. So I will configure an external VM based installed Grafana to get graphs from all the clusters.

### Configuring OpenShift Prometheus

First we will create a a secret in Openshift for the authentication based in the name of the monitoring service account:

```yaml
oc apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: prometheus-robot-secret
  namespace: openshift-monitoring
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/service-account.name: prometheus-k8s
type: kubernetes.io/service-account-token
EOF
```

Check the token string and Try to query the OpenShift Prometheus using that token

```bash
TOKEN=`oc -n openshift-monitoring extract secret/prometheus-robot-secret --to=- --keys=token`

PROMETHEUS_URL=$(oc get route -n openshift-monitoring prometheus-k8s -o jsonpath="{.status.ingress[0].host}")

curl -sk -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" https://$PROMETHEUS_URL/api/v1/alerts
```

The result will end up with something like this:

```json
{"status":"success","data":{"alerts":[{"labels":{"alertname":"PodDisruptionBudgetAtLimit" …
```

### Integrate Grafana with OpenShift Prometheus

Go back to the Grafana Dashboard, and add '''data source''' by go to '''menu''' → '''connection''' → '''data source''' → add '''new data source''' and choose '''Prometheus'''.

On Authentication:

* Choose Forward OAuth Identity as the authentication method
* Skip TLS Certificate Validation when using untrusted certificate

![On Authentication](/img/include/openshift-external-grafana01.webp)

On HTTP Headers, add Header:

* Fill in the Header with '''Authorization'''
* Fill in the value with the output of this following command

```bash
TOKEN= `oc -n openshift-monitoring extract secret/prometheus-robot-secret — to=- — keys=token`
echo "Bearer $TOKEN"
```

![On Authentication](/img/include/openshift-external-grafana02.webp)

Click Save and Test, if there is an error it will be showing the error

![On Authentication](/img/include/openshift-external-grafana03.webp)

If everything goes well, we can start building Grafana dashboard

![On Authentication](/img/include/openshift-external-grafana04.webp)

Click on building the dashboard, and choose the previous data source

![On Authentication](/img/include/openshift-external-grafana05.webp)

![On Authentication](/img/include/openshift-external-grafana06.webp)