Announcing ntopng and Grafana Integration

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Disclaimer
This article is outdated: please see this document for using ntopng with grafana

This is to announce the release of the ntopng Grafana datasource that you can find on the grafana website. Using this plugin you can create a Grafana dashboard that fetches data from ntopng in a matter of clicks.

To set up the datasource visit Grafana Datasources page and select the green button Add a datasource. Select ntopng as the datasource Type in the page that opens.

The HTTP url must point to a running ntopng instance, to the endpoint /lua/modules/grafana. The Access method must be set to Direct. An example of a full HTTP url that assumes there is an ntopng instance running on localhostport 3001 is the following:

http://localhost:3001/lua/modules/grafana

Tick Basic Auth if your ntopng instance has authentication enabled and specify a username-password pair in fields User and Password. The pair must identify an ntopng user. Leave the Basic Auth checkbock unticked if ntopng has no authentication (--disable-login).

Finally, hit the button Save and Test to verify the datasource is working properly. A green message Success: Data souce is working appears to confirm the datasource is properly set up.

Supported metrics

Once the datasource is set up, ntopng metrics can be charted in any Grafana dashboard.

Supported metrics are:

  • Interface metrics
  • Host metrics

Metrics that identify an interface are prefixed with a interface_ that precedes the actual interface name. Similarly, metrics that identify an host are prefixed with a host_ followed by the actual host ip address.

Interface and host metrics have a suffix that contain the type of metric (i.e., traffic for traffic rates and traffic totals orallprotocols for layer-7 application protocol rates). The type of metric is followed by the unit of measure (i.e., bpsfor bits per second, pps for packets per second, and bytes).

Interface Metrics

Supported interface metrics are:

  • Traffic rates, in bits and packets per second
  • Traffic totals, both in Bytes and packets
  • Application protocol rates, in bits per second

Host Metrics

Supported host metrics are:

  • Traffic rate in bits per second
  • Traffic total in Bytes
  • Application protocol rates in bits per second.