Tag: Grafana

Grafana is an open source software to create visualization of time-series data. This can graph AWS CloudWatch Metrics too.

As a security best practice when using Grafana on an EC2 Instance it is recommended to use an IAM Role. Using a credentials file may expose access to your AWS Account if ever other people gain access to your Grafana Server.

Follow the step-by-step instructions below on how to attach an IAM Role to your Grafana EC2 Instance and set Grafana to access CloudWatch.

• Creation of IAM Role for Grafana EC2 Instance
• Adding CloudWatch Data Source
• Testing CloudWatch Data Source

Creation of IAM Role for Grafana EC2 Instance

Create an IAM policy with the below permission in JSON. Name this GrafanaAccessPolicy.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "AllowReadingMetricsFromCloudWatch",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "cloudwatch:DescribeAlarmsForMetric",
        "cloudwatch:ListMetrics",
        "cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics",
        "cloudwatch:GetMetricData"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Sid": "AllowReadingTagsInstancesRegionsFromEC2",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["ec2:DescribeTags", "ec2:DescribeInstances", "ec2:DescribeRegions"],
      "Resource": "*"
    },
    {
      "Sid": "AllowReadingResourcesForTags",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": "tag:GetResources",
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Then create an IAM Role with the following properties.