NoData situation with Mimir dashboards in operations/mimir-mixin

Grafana Dashboards
1

  • What Grafana version and what operating system are you using?
    Mimir 3.1.2, Grafana 12.0.1 both running on K8s 1.35

  • What are you trying to achieve?
    Trying to deploy Mimir dashboards provided in the repo in operations/mimir-mixin directory

  • How are you trying to achieve it?
    As documented, running make build-mixin to compile the dashboards and import into Grafana manually (testing with one of the dashboards for the time being - Object Store dashboard)

  • What happened?
    Dashboard panels show no data. Checking the panel definitions, I saw that Min Interval is defined as 15s which causes the problem, as I have 1 min scrape interval in Grafana Alloy. When I switched Min Interval value for the panel to 1m or 5m, I started to see graphs on the panel.

  • What did you expect to happen?
    In config.libsonnet there is a parameter named scrape_interval which I set to 1m. There is a rateInterval definition in operations/mimir-mixin/utils.libsonnet and for some dashboard panels it is used to calculate Min Interval but for most of the panels (for example in Object Store dashboard) it is not included in source code and panel gets default 15s setting.

  • Can you copy/paste the configuration(s) that you are having problems with?
    Evewrything is same as in the repository, except line 769 of operations/mimir-mixin/config.libsonnet set as scrape_interval: '1m'

  • Did you receive any errors in the Grafana UI or in related logs? If so, please tell us exactly what they were.
    None

  • Did you follow any online instructions? If so, what is the URL?
    Followed Installing Grafana Mimir dashboards and alerts | Grafana Mimir documentation

Question 1:

Is there an easy way to set this Min Interval option for panels? As far as I can see, my only option now is to edit the compilation output JSON files manually and add this to panel options structure for each and every panel.

Question 2:

It is a bit complicated to adjust the configuration in mimir-mixin in general. It is not using latest Grafonnet library structure so harder to follow the source code. Is there any plans to switch to Grafana Foundation SDK for the dashboards?

Thanks and kind regards
Suleyman Kutlu (a.k.a. SNK)

2

scrape_interval: '1m' does not automatically set the Grafana panel Min interval for every generated panel. The mixin uses the configured interval in specific helpers, but panels that don’t use those helpers can still end up with a 15s interval. With a 1m scrape interval, this can result in panels showing no data.

1: There is currently no mimir-mixin configuration option to globally set the Grafana panel Min interval/interval for all generated panels. The proper fix is to update the affected dashboard definitions so they use the configured scrape interval. Editing the generated JSON is a workaround; automating that post-processing would avoid manual edits after regeneration.

2: The Mimir dashboards are currently generated using the Jsonnet-based mixin. I don’t have a confirmed upstream statement that mimir-mixin is planned to migrate to the Grafana Foundation SDK, so I wouldn’t claim that such a migration is planned. This would need to be confirmed by the Mimir maintainers.

So your scrape_interval: '1m' configuration is not itself the problem; the affected dashboard panels are not consistently using that configured interval.

This is a known limitation of the Mimir mixin with higher scrape intervals →

3

Indeed, for the time being I have manually fixed interval settings in the compiled dashboard JSON files and all started to show the data :grimacing:

I may start to migrate dashboard sources to Foundation SDK as a side project for greater good

4

Yes, that confirms the 1m scrape interval itself wasn’t the issue; the affected generated panels simply weren’t applying it consistently.

The manual JSON changes are a workable workaround, although fixing the mixin source would be preferable so the changes survive regeneration.

Regarding a migration to the Grafana Foundation SDK, I wouldn’t assume that is an upstream Mimir plan unless the Mimir maintainers confirm it.