How is data connection and display implemented in Grafana?

In Grafana, connecting and displaying data occurs through data sources. First, a data source is added in the Grafana interface — this could be a database, monitoring system, or API (for example, Prometheus, InfluxDB, MySQL, etc.).

After connecting the data source, dashboards with panels are created, where each panel contains a query to the data source to retrieve the necessary metrics or data. Grafana executes the queries, receives the data, and visualizes it in the form of graphs, tables, and other visualizations.

Example: connecting to Prometheus and displaying the CPU usage metric.

# In the Grafana UI, add a Prometheus data source with the server URL

In the dashboard panel, write a PromQL query:

node_cpu_seconds_total{mode="idle"}

Grafana will execute the query, receive the data, and display a CPU usage graph.