Grafana Stack by VSHN
The Grafana Stack, managed by VSHN for you.
Compose and scale observability with one or all pieces of the stack - on your infrastructure.
Our service offers a compelling solution for businesses seeking a new generation of observability tooling. Based in Switzerland, our service provides several key advantages:
- Switzerland Based
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Hosting your Grafana Stack by a company based in Switzerland ensures data privacy, security, and compliance with strict Swiss regulations.
- Unrestricted Access to Grafana Features
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With our service, you have access to the full range of Grafana Stack’s features, ensuring you can tailor the configuration to your specific needs.
- Supported by Grafana Professionals
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Our team consists of experienced Grafana Stack professionals who can provide expert guidance and support, ensuring that you can make the most of your Grafana Stack implementation.
- Simple Price Model
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We offer a straightforward pricing model, making it easy for you to budget and plan for your observability needs without hidden costs or surprises.
- SLA Available
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For added peace of mind, we offer Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that guarantee the reliability and availability of your Grafana Stack service.
- Run by Experts Running Software
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Our service is managed by a team of experts with a proven track record of running complex software systems, ensuring that your Grafana Stack service is in capable hands.
In summary, our service provides a secure, feature-rich, and hassle-free solution for observability, all while benefiting from Switzerland’s robust data protection laws and the expertise of Grafana Stack professionals.
| The user documentation is available under docs.appcat.ch. |
- Availability of the service
Features
The Grafana Stack consists of five main tools, they are known as the Core LGTM+ Stack: Logs, Grafana, Traces, Metrics and Profiles.
Grafana
Dashboard anything. Observe everything.
Query, visualize, alert on, and understand your data no matter where it’s stored. With Grafana you can create, explore, and share all of your data through beautiful, flexible dashboards.
| Feature | Open Source | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
Infinite [1] Users |
||
Admin user access |
||
Guaranteed performance |
[2] |
[2] |
Grafana Mimir (Metrics)
Mimir is an open source, horizontally scalable, highly available, multi-tenant TSDB for long-term storage for Prometheus.
| Feature | Open Source | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
Deployment mode |
||
No downtime during regular maintenance |
[3] |
[3] |
High availability |
[4] |
[4] |
Guaranteed performance |
[2] |
[2] |
Grafana Loki (Logs)
Loki is a log aggregation system designed to store and query logs from all your applications and infrastructure.
| Feature | Open Source | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
Deployment mode |
||
No downtime during regular maintenance |
[3] |
[3] |
High availability |
[4] |
[4] |
Max. mount of ingested metrics per month |
16 TB |
32 TB |
Guaranteed performance |
[2] |
[2] |
Grafana Tempo (Traces)
Grafana Tempo lets you scale tracing as far as possible with minimal operational cost and less complexity than ever before.
| Feature | Open Source | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
Deployment mode |
||
No downtime during regular maintenance |
[3] |
[3] |
High availability |
[4] |
[4] |
Guaranteed performance |
[2] |
[2] |
Grafana Pyroscope (Profiles)
Grafana Pyroscope is an open source software project for aggregating continuous profiling data. Continuous profiling is an observability signal that allows you to understand your workload’s resources usage down to the source code line number. Grafana Pyroscope is fully integrated with Grafana allowing you to correlate with other observability signals, like metrics, logs, and traces.
| Feature | Open Source |
|---|---|
No downtime during regular maintenance |
[3] |
High availability |
[4] |
Guaranteed performance |
[2] |
Common Features
The following common features are available as well:
Self-Service Instance Provisioning and Configuration |
Service instances can be self-service ordered and are provisioned fully automated in the background. Access to self-service provisioning is provided via custom Kubernetes configuration objects in the Kubernetes cluster or via Open Service Broker API (on request). |
|---|---|
Best-Practice Configuration Management |
Services are configured with best practices and the configuration is updated continuously as we learn improvements during day-2 operations and from the community. Industry standards are used for security configuration and wherever possible TLS encrypted connections are offered by default. |
Maintenance and Security Operations |
Patch updates are applied as they get available. We monitor security information for services and apply zero-day patches or workaround configuration as they become available. |
Data Protection and Recovery |
All services offer a regular backup option. See the service descriptions for more details. |
Service Metrics |
Performance metrics are collected regularly and are available as graphs to the user. The metrics are automatically monitored and acted upon irregularities, see Monitoring and Alerting below. |
Monitoring and Alerting |
Service Level Indicators are monitored and alerted upon. Depending on the service level alerts are automatically handled by a VSHNeer. |
Service Logging |
All logs are collected and are available to debug service errors. |
Support by VSHN or Vendor |
Support for all services are available from VSHN support engineers. Depending on the service, additional support by the software vendor or a third-party might be available. |
Enterprise vs. Open Source
While we offer Grafana Open Source tooling as well as the Enterprise counter-part, we recommend using the Enterprise versions for critical production environments.
We offer the same service for both editions. For the enterprise editions, additional subscriptions from Grafana Labs are required, which can be acquired through VSHN.
| Open Source | Enterprise |
|---|---|
Grafana |
Grafana Enterprise |
Grafana Mimir |
Enterprise Metrics |
Grafana Loki |
Enterprise Logs |
Grafana Tempo |
Enterprise Traces |
Grafana Pyroscope |
n/a |
Grafana Support
Support for the Grafana Stack is organized in three levels:
- Level 1: End-User Support
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Helping users with the daily use of Grafana is the customer’s concern. End-user support isn’t included in this service.
- Level 2: Operations Support
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VSHN provides support concerning the operations of the Grafana stack and the database. Our Support Plans describes in detail what VSHN offers in terms of support.
- Level 3: Application Support
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Grafana Labs offers third-level support for the Grafana Enterprise stack to VSHN, so that there are experts available to help with complex issues. Direct support from Grafana Labs to the end-user is available with a separate support contract.
Supported versions
We only support the latest versions of the tools included in the Grafana Stack. Once a version isn’t supported anymore by the upstream project, we’ll stop supporting the version as well.
Only features marked as "General availability" as stated in Release life cycle for Grafana Labs are supported by VSHN.
Upgrade Policy
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The upgrade to a new major version needs to be performed within a 2-month grace period after the latest
major.minorversion. -
Once the support for a service has ended, the service is considered "unmanaged" by VSHN. Meanwhile, the service still continues to run.
| An unmanaged service is a service that is not monitored and SLA doesn’t apply anymore. |
Recurring Maintenance
We conduct recurring maintenance tasks on the service to keep it stable and up-to-date.
- Planned Maintenance Activities
-
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Updating of the base container image with the latest patched version, this causes a service restart.
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If there’s a newer minor version available that does not contain breaking changes, then the service will automatically be updated to that minor version.
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Major upgrades are not automatic.
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Configuration improvements as we learn new best-practices or some configuration proved to be non-optimal.
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- Mandatory Maintenance Activities
-
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Security issue (CVE) mitigation by updating to a patched version or configuration adjustments, usually causes service restart.
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Regular maintenance on the underlying platform, usually causing up to 2 restarts per replica.
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- Maintenance Windows
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This is an automated recurrence once a week. The day and time can be configured per service instance, whereas by default it is a random time in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday.
Users responsibilities
As a DevOps company, we believe in its collaborative approach. Flawless service is only possible through a sense of responsibility on both sides. Accordingly, we rely on the user to consider the following points:
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Choose reasonably sized resources for the software consuming the service
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Act early when an increase in service usage is foreseen (for example increase resources)
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Rely on best-practices for using the service
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Choose a matching service level for your use-case
Pricing
| Contact us at sales@vshn.ch for a discounted bundle price. |
- Grafana
| Service Level | per day | per 30 days |
|---|---|---|
CHF 4.00 |
CHF 120.00 |
|
CHF 12.00 |
CHF 360.00 |
- Grafana Loki (Logs)
| Service Level | per day | per 30 days |
|---|---|---|
CHF 12.00 |
CHF 360.00 |
|
CHF 36.00 |
CHF 1'080.00 |
- Grafana Mimir (Metrics)
| Service Level | per day | per 30 days |
|---|---|---|
CHF 12.00 |
CHF 360.00 |
|
CHF 36.00 |
CHF 1'080.00 |
- Grafana Tempo (Traces)
| Service Level | per day | per 30 days |
|---|---|---|
CHF 12.00 |
CHF 360.00 |
|
CHF 36.00 |
CHF 1'080.00 |
- Grafana Pyroscope (Profiles)
| Service Level | per day | per 30 days |
|---|---|---|
CHF 12.00 |
CHF 360.00 |
|
CHF 36.00 |
CHF 1'080.00 |
-
Grafana Enterprise subscriptions are not included in the price and have to be ordered in addition when required. Please contact sales@vshn.ch to get a quote for Enterprise subscriptions.
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The computing resources required for the service are not included in the price and charged additionally.
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Support is available at additional cost via Support Plans.
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These prices are valid starting 2024-12-01 until further notice.
See Pricing for more details.
Grafana Open Source
Most of the software developed by Grafana Labs for the Grafana Stack is available as Open Source. While the Open Source versions lack some enterprise features, they are production ready and battle tested.
We also offer these Open Source tools as managed service. Please contact us to get more information.
FAQ
- What do I need to get the service?
-
Currently the service is available on APPUiO and Managed OpenShift. Once you have access to such a cluster, it’s a matter of creating a Kubernetes object to order a service instance. In the getting started guide you’ll find all the information you need to get started.
- Where do I get it?
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As mentioned in the previous answer, the service is available on APPUiO and Managed OpenShift.
- Are there any extra costs?
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Yes, there are usage costs associated with the service. Please refer to VSHN AppCat Services Pricing for further information.
- Who will set it up?
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All services are available in full self-service. There is no need to open a ticket and wait until the service is provisioned, it’s available immediately.
- What do I need to do?
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The user documentation explains everything you need to know.
- Can I get it myself or do I need to contact anyone?
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There is no need to contact anyone, just follow the instructions on docs.appcat.ch and you’ll be up and running in no time.
- How can it be integrated in my environment?
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Services are available right now on APPUiO and Managed OpenShift. If you want these services on your environment, please contact us and we’ll help you get started.
- How can I get support?
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You can either open a ticket on our customer portal or send an email to support@vshn.ch. Please note that support is only available with our support plans.