How ESnet built Grafana plugins to visualize network data

ESnet (Energy Sciences Network) at Berkeley National Lab is a high-performance network backbone built to support scientific research, allowing scientists to collaborate and perform research without worrying about distance or location. In order to make sure its network is running as smoothly as possible, the ESnet team uses Grafana to visualize and understand telemetry data collected within its Stardust Environment, and thus predict capacity needs and easily view traffic surges on the infrastructure. The team has also built several visualizations tailored to ESnet’s network analytic use cases and contributed them to the Grafana community: Sankey Diagram, Slope Graph, Bump Chart, Chord Diagram, and Matrix panel.

In this session, Software Engineers Katrina Turner, Andy Lake, and Dan Doyle will delve into why ESnet needed these new visualizations, how they went about building them, and how others in the community can use them for their own purposes (networking and otherwise). Having recently deployed Grafana Enterprise, the team will touch on its future work, including utilizing the new authorization and team features to give ESnet users customized login and dashboard experiences on a single instance.

Dan Doyle
Senior Full-Stack Software Developer at ESnet (Energy Sciences Network) at Berkeley National Lab
Dan Doyle
Senior Full-Stack Software Developer at ESnet (Energy Sciences Network) at Berkeley National Lab
Dan is a senior full-stack software developer at ESnet focusing on network measurement data collection, analysis, and visualization – from optical laser strength to BGP peering availability to netflow analysis and everything in between. In his spare time, he enjoys beekeeping, woodworking, and home automation – all of which involve Grafana at some level!
Andy Lake
Network Software Engineer at ESnet (Energy Sciences Network) at Berkeley National Lab
Andy Lake
Network Software Engineer at ESnet (Energy Sciences Network) at Berkeley National Lab
Andy Lake is a Network Software Engineer at ESnet on the Measurement and Analysis team. He plays a lead role on multiple projects, including the open source measurement toolkit perfSONAR and the Stardust measurement platform. He has a strong interest in collecting data about networks and finding ways to make it useful to users with wide ranges of backgrounds.
Katrina Turner
Software Engineer at ESnet (Energy Sciences Network) at Berkeley National Lab
Katrina Turner
Software Engineer at ESnet (Energy Sciences Network) at Berkeley National Lab
Katrina is a Software Engineer at ESnet working primarily on UI development. She creates dashboards and custom plugins for the Stardust project and has contributed five panel plugins to the Grafana Community plugin library to date. In her free time, Katrina enjoys chasing after her two toddlers, baking, dancing hula, and going to the beach.