2024-05-20: Switch Grafana Dashboards to Mimir
Production Change
Change Summary
Resolves scalability#3442 (closed)
Switches the default data source for Grafana dashboards to Mimir.
This change is scheduled for 2100 UTC on May 20th.
Change Details
- Services Impacted - ServiceGrafana
- Change Technician - @stejacks-gitlab
- Change Reviewer - @nduff @marcogreg
- Time tracking - 60 minutes
- Downtime Component - 0
Set Maintenance Mode in GitLab
If your change involves scheduled maintenance, add a step to set and unset maintenance mode per our runbooks. This will make sure SLA calculations adjust for the maintenance period.
Detailed steps for the change
Pre-steps
On Thursday, May 16 and Monday May 20th, @stejacks-gitlab will post an announcement in a curated list of channels.
Announcement
The Scalability:Observability team will be migrating to our new metrics system, Mimir, this week. This should be a seamless migration for most users. If you're someone who uses thanos.gitlab.net to search for metrics, you should now use Grafana Explore instead. Please watch our short video walkthrough to learn about searching in the new system, Mimir.
If you have any questions or feedback, please update the feedback issue or reach out to us in #g_scalability-observability.
Channels
Thursday, May 16:
-
#s_platforms -
#g_observability -
#infrastructure-lounge -
#development -
#product -
#support_leadership -
Update engineering_FYI doc.
Monday, May 20 (before this change is executed):
-
#engineering_fyi -
#whats-happening-at-gitlab -
#support_team-chat.
Change Steps - steps to take to execute the change
Estimated Time to Complete (mins) - 60 minutes
-
Set label changein-progress /label ~change::in-progress
-
Merge runbooks MR: gitlab-com/runbooks!7357 (merged) -
Verify that dashboards are loading with the correct data source -
Set Grafana datasource default correctly. https://dashboards.gitlab.net/connections/datasources, and toggle on default for Mimir - Gitlab - All Environments and toggle off for Global. -
Set label changecomplete /label ~change::complete
Rollback
Rollback steps - steps to be taken in the event of a need to rollback this change
Estimated Time to Complete (mins) - 60 minutes
-
Revert runbooks MR OR set specific dashboards back to using Thanos by adding defaultPrometheusDatasource='Global' in the metrics catalogue entry. -
Set label changeaborted /label ~change::aborted
Monitoring
Key metrics to observe
- Metric: Grafana dashboards
- Location: Do the dashboards load?
- What changes to this metric should prompt a rollback: Dashboards not loading.
Change Reviewer checklist
-
Check if the following applies: - The scheduled day and time of execution of the change is appropriate.
- The change plan is technically accurate.
- The change plan includes estimated timing values based on previous testing.
- The change plan includes a viable rollback plan.
- The specified metrics/monitoring dashboards provide sufficient visibility for the change.
-
Check if the following applies: - The complexity of the plan is appropriate for the corresponding risk of the change. (i.e. the plan contains clear details).
- The change plan includes success measures for all steps/milestones during the execution.
- The change adequately minimizes risk within the environment/service.
- The performance implications of executing the change are well-understood and documented.
- The specified metrics/monitoring dashboards provide sufficient visibility for the change.
- If not, is it possible (or necessary) to make changes to observability platforms for added visibility?
- The change has a primary and secondary SRE with knowledge of the details available during the change window.
- The change window has been agreed with Release Managers in advance of the change. If the change is planned for APAC hours, this issue has an agreed pre-change approval.
- The labels blocks deployments and/or blocks feature-flags are applied as necessary.
Change Technician checklist
-
Check if all items below are complete: - The change plan is technically accurate.
- This Change Issue is linked to the appropriate Issue and/or Epic
- Change has been tested in staging and results noted in a comment on this issue.
- A dry-run has been conducted and results noted in a comment on this issue.
- The change execution window respects the Production Change Lock periods.
- For C1 and C2 change issues, the change event is added to the GitLab Production calendar.
- For C1 and C2 change issues, the SRE on-call has been informed prior to change being rolled out. (In #production channel, mention
@sre-oncall
and this issue and await their acknowledgement.) - For C1 and C2 change issues, the SRE on-call provided approval with the eoc_approved label on the issue.
- For C1 and C2 change issues, the Infrastructure Manager provided approval with the manager_approved label on the issue.
- Release managers have been informed prior to any C1, C2, or blocks deployments change being rolled out. (In #production channel, mention
@release-managers
and this issue and await their acknowledgment.) - There are currently no active incidents that are severity1 or severity2
- If the change involves doing maintenance on a database host, an appropriate silence targeting the host(s) should be added for the duration of the change.