Add Dashboards using Grafana Operator

Manage Grafana dashboards and datasources declaratively in Kubernetes with Grafana Operator, Helm, and CRDs, enabling easy versioning, automation, and maintenance of observability for Harness modules.

Overview

Harness provides curated dashboards for multiple modules such as CI, CD, STO, Platform and many more. To manage these dashboards efficiently, we recommend using the Grafana Operator, which allows you to:

• Deploy dashboards as Kubernetes custom resources (CRs).

• Maintain your monitoring setup via GitOps or Helm.

• Separate dashboards into logical folders using folder CRs.

• Automatically sync dashboards into your Grafana instance.

This guide walks you through installing the operator, connecting it to a running Grafana instance, and syncing dashboards from the Harness open-source dashboards repository.

Install Grafana Operator

To install the Grafana Operator via Helm:

NOTE

We recommend using grafana operator v5.16.0 and above having several fixes with grafana operator specially related to Grafana Folders struct.

helm upgrade -i grafana-operator oci://ghcr.io/grafana/helm-charts/grafana-operator -n grafana

This creates the operator in the grafana namespace, which will monitor and reconcile Grafana-related custom resources.

Connect the Operator to Grafana

The Grafana Operator needs credentials and the endpoint URL of your running Grafana instance to sync resources. This is done by defining a Secret and a Grafana custom resource.

Create a file named grafana.yaml:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: grafana-admin-credentials
  namespace: grafana
stringData:
  GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_USER: admin #         <-- Modify username
  GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD: password #  <-- Modify password
---
apiVersion: grafana.integreatly.org/v1beta1
kind: Grafana
metadata:
  name: grafana-instance
  labels:
    dashboards: "grafana-instance"
  namespace: grafana
spec:
  external:
    url: http://grafana.grafana.svc.cluster.local:3000 # <-- Grafana endpoint
    adminPassword:
      name: grafana-admin-credentials
      key: GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD
    adminUser:
      name: grafana-admin-credentials
      key: GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_USER

Apply it in your cluster:

kubectl apply -f grafana.yaml

---

Install and Sync Harness Dashboards

To install Harness-maintained dashboards and automatically sync them into your Grafana instance:

1. Clone the dashboards repo:

     git clone https://github.com/harness/harness-dashboards.git
     cd harness-dashboards/chart

2. Install dashboards using Helm:

     helm install harness-dashboards . -n grafana

Once deployed, the Grafana Operator will sync these resources into your Grafana instance. The dashboards will be organized under a top-level folder titled Harness, containing subfolders for each module (e.g., Platform, CI, CD) and further grouped by services.

Summary

You’ve now set up a scalable and declarative way to manage dashboards using the Grafana Operator. This approach enables structured, version-controlled observability tailored for your Harness environment.