Rebuilding GreptimeCloud Visualization with Perses

Time series data visualization is crucial for modern observability and analytics. While powerful tools like Grafana exist, we at GreptimeCloud wanted to provide our users with a seamless, integrated experience for visualizing their time series data without the need to install and maintain additional tools.

Our Journey to Better Visualization ​

Initially, we developed our own visualization solution. However, we quickly realized that reinventing the wheel wasn't the most efficient approach for our team. Building and maintaining a comprehensive visualization stack requires significant resources, especially for a focused UI team.

This realization led us to establish clear objectives for our visualization strategy:

1. Create dashboards that are fully code-based, making them both visually and textually comprehensible
2. Implement Git-based management to leverage industry-standard practices like version control and CI/CD pipelines

Enter Perses: A Perfect Match ​

We've been following the Perses project closely, and its recent acceptance as a CNCF project marks a significant milestone in its development. Through our research and community engagement, we discovered that Perses isn't just designed as a standalone application – it can be effectively embedded into other applications, as demonstrated by successful implementations in projects like OpenShift.

This flexibility perfectly aligned with our requirements. After conducting a proof of concept, we fine-tuned the integration with a few upstream adjustments to ensure a cohesive experience—and were happy to contribute back to the project.

Introducing the New GreptimeCloud Visualization Workbench ​

Today, we're excited to announce the latest version of our visualization workbench, which combines three powerful components into a unified solution:

1. Perses Integration: Industry-standard visualization capabilities from the CNCF ecosystem
2. Managed Time-Series Database: The fully-managed, scalable time-series GreptimeDB
3. Dedicated Git Server: A complete Git infrastructure for version-controlling all your dashboards

This comprehensive solution offers several key benefits:

• Native Perses UI Integration: Build and manage dashboards directly within GreptimeCloud
• Full Portability: Export your dashboards as plain JSON files, compatible with any Perses-based setup
• Version Control: Leverage Git's powerful features for dashboard management
• Bidirectional Compatibility: Import existing Perses dashboards into GreptimeCloud seamlessly
• End-to-End Management: Handle your time-series data and visualizations in one place, with everything backed by Git

Community Commitment ​

Having experienced the challenges of building visualization tools firsthand, we're committed to contributing back to the Perses community. Our team will actively participate in bug fixes and feature development, helping to improve the platform for everyone.

Get Started Today ​

Experience our enhanced visualization capabilities by creating a free GreptimeCloud instance. The new dashboard features are available now, allowing you to start building powerful, version-controlled visualizations immediately.

About Greptime ​

We help industries that generate large amounts of time-series data, such as Connected Vehicles (CV), IoT, and Observability, to efficiently uncover the hidden value of data in real-time.

Visit the latest version from any device to get started and get the most out of your data.

• GreptimeDB, written in Rust, is a distributed, open-source, time-series database designed for scalability, efficiency, and powerful analytics.
• Edge-Cloud Integrated TSDB is designed for the unique demands of edge storage and compute in IoT. It tackles the exponential growth of edge data by integrating a multimodal edge-side database with cloud-based GreptimeDB Enterprise. This combination reduces traffic, computing, and storage costs while enhancing data timeliness and business insights.
• GreptimeCloud is a fully-managed cloud database-as-a-service (DBaaS) solution built on GreptimeDB. It efficiently supports applications in fields such as observability, IoT, and finance.

Star us on GitHub or join GreptimeDB Community on Slack to get connected. Also, you can go to our contribution page to find some interesting issues to start with.