Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Grafana VS etcd

Compare Grafana VS etcd and see what are their differences

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Grafana logo Grafana

Data visualization & Monitoring with support for Graphite, InfluxDB, Prometheus, Elasticsearch and many more databases

etcd logo etcd

A distributed, reliable key-value store for the most critical data of a distributed system
  • Grafana Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-21
  • etcd Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-29

Grafana

$ Details
Release Date
2014 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
New York
City
New York
Founder(s)
Anthony Woods
Employees
100 - 249

Grafana features and specs

  • Customizable Dashboards
    Grafana provides highly customizable and flexible dashboards, allowing users to create and arrange panels in a way that best represents their metrics and data.
  • Wide Range of Data Sources
    Grafana supports numerous data sources including Prometheus, Elasticsearch, Graphite, AWS CloudWatch, and more, making it versatile and adaptable to various data environments.
  • Rich Plugin Ecosystem
    The platform offers a rich ecosystem of plugins for data visualization, data sources, and apps, enabling users to extend its functionality to suit specific needs.
  • Open Source
    As an open-source tool, Grafana is free to use and customize, allowing organizations to tailor it to their specific requirements without licensing costs.
  • Alerting System
    Grafana comes with a powerful alerting system that can notify users about important events through various channels like email, Slack, and PagerDuty.
  • Community and Support
    Grafana has a large and active community, providing extensive documentation, forums, and tutorials to help users solve issues and improve their dashboards.

Possible disadvantages of Grafana

  • Learning Curve
    The extensive customization features and numerous data sources can be overwhelming for new users, leading to a steep learning curve.
  • Performance Issues with Large Datasets
    When dealing with very large datasets or high-cardinality data, performance issues can arise, requiring additional tuning or more powerful infrastructure.
  • Limited Built-in Data Storage
    Grafana itself does not store data; it relies on external data sources. This could necessitate using additional services or infrastructure for data storage.
  • Complex Setup for Alerting
    Setting up and managing the alerting system can be complicated, especially for users who are not familiar with monitoring and alerting concepts.
  • Dependence on External Data Sources
    The effectiveness of Grafana depends heavily on the quality and stability of the external data sources it connects to, which can be a point of failure.
  • Cost for Enterprise Features
    While the open-source version is free, advanced features and support are available only in the paid enterprise version, which could be costly for some organizations.

etcd features and specs

  • Consistency
    etcd uses the Raft consensus algorithm to ensure strong consistency across distributed systems, making it ideal for scenarios where reliable data storage is critical.
  • High Availability
    By distributing data across multiple nodes, etcd ensures high availability and fault tolerance, allowing services to remain operational even if some nodes fail.
  • Simplicity
    etcd offers a simple key-value store interface, making it easy to understand and integrate with other services without requiring complex configurations.
  • Performance
    Optimized for fast reads and writes, etcd can handle large volumes of concurrent requests, making it suitable for high-performance applications.
  • Secure
    etcd provides excellent security features, including SSL/TLS encryption for data in transit and role-based access control to ensure that data access is tightly controlled.

Possible disadvantages of etcd

  • Resource Intensive
    Running etcd, especially in a clustered configuration, can be resource-intensive, requiring significant CPU and memory to ensure optimal performance and reliability.
  • Operational Complexity
    Although etcd itself is simple, managing a distributed etcd cluster can become complex, requiring expertise to configure and maintain properly.
  • Data Volume Limitations
    etcd is not designed as a general-purpose database and has limitations on how much data it can efficiently store, typically up to a few gigabytes per cluster.
  • Write Throughput
    The write throughput of etcd can be a bottleneck under heavy load, as it needs to ensure data consistency across nodes, which can introduce latency.
  • Limited Query Capabilities
    As a key-value store, etcd lacks the advanced querying capabilities of traditional databases, which may limit its use for complex data retrieval operations.

Analysis of Grafana

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Grafana is generally considered to be a good choice for users looking for a powerful, flexible, and user-friendly data visualization tool. Its ability to integrate with numerous data sources and its rich feature set make it a popular choice among developers, engineers, and IT operations teams.

Why this product is good

  • Grafana is widely regarded as a robust and versatile open-source data visualization and monitoring platform. It supports a wide range of data sources like Prometheus, InfluxDB, Elasticsearch, and many others, making it highly adaptable for various use cases. Grafana's intuitive and interactive dashboards allow users to visually track the performance and health of their system in real-time, enhance operational efficiency, and facilitate better decision-making. Its strong community support, frequent updates, and rich plugin ecosystem further contribute to its reputation as a reliable tool for monitoring and analytics.

Recommended for

    Grafana is particularly recommended for IT professionals, data analysts, and engineers who need to monitor and visualize large datasets in real-time. It's ideal for organizations running complex systems or applications that require comprehensive monitoring to ensure uptime and performance are maintained. Additionally, Grafana is suitable for teams that value open-source solutions and require a platform that can integrate with multiple data sources and adapt to various monitoring needs.

Grafana videos

Grafana vs Kibana | Beautiful data graphs and log analysis systems

More videos:

  • Review - Business Dashboards with Grafana and MySQL
  • Review - Grafana Labs 2019 Year in Review

etcd videos

ETCD in Kubernetes

More videos:

  • Review - Service Discovery Zookeeper vs etcd vs consul أكتشاف الخدمات شرح عربى
  • Review - Episode#11 Working with ETCD - Backup and Restore Operations - Part#1

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Grafana and etcd)
Monitoring Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Web Servers
0 0%
100% 100
Data Dashboard
100 100%
0% 0
Web And Application Servers

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Grafana and etcd

Grafana Reviews

Self Hosting Like Its 2025
If you’re looking for straightforward monitoring and the thought of setting up a full Zabbix or Grafana stack seems daunting, this software is a real lifesaver. With just one deployment, you can monitor your services and receive notifications through a wide variety of channels including…
Source: kiranet.org
Top 10 Grafana Alternatives in 2024
Middleware is one such Grafana alternative that offers robust data monitoring and visualization capabilities at affordable prices. Though it’s commercial, unlike Grafana, its rich feature set ensures accommodating your present and future business needs.
Source: middleware.io
Top 11 Grafana Alternatives & Competitors [2024]
Are you looking for Grafana alternatives? Then you have come to the right place. Grafana started as a data visualization tool. It slowly evolved into a tool that can take data from multiple data sources for visualization. For observability, Grafana offers the LGTM stack (Loki for logs, Grafana for visualization, Tempo for traces, and Mimir for metrics). You need to configure...
Source: signoz.io
10 Best Grafana Alternatives [2023 Comparison]
For this reason, many have set out in search of Grafana alternatives. Since you’ve landed yourself here, I’m guessing that you’re one of those people. Fear not! We’ve put together a comprehensive list of the 10 best Grafana alternatives out there today.
Source: sematext.com
Top 10 Tableau Open Source Alternatives: A Comprehensive List
When it comes to visualization, Grafana is a great tool for visualizing time series data with support for various databases including Prometheus, InfluxDB, and Graphite. It is also compatible with relational databases such as MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server. While Tableau can do the same thing, Grafana’s open-source status allows the users to add additional data sources and...
Source: hevodata.com

etcd Reviews

We have no reviews of etcd yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Grafana should be more popular than etcd. It has been mentiond 240 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Grafana mentions (240)

  • The synergy between DevOps and Cloud Computing
    Monitoring and Logging: Tools like Prometheus and Grafana provide instant observability. - Source: dev.to / 13 days ago
  • Project of the Week: Grafana
    Grafana is a leading open-source platform for monitoring, visualization, and observability. Since its initial launch in 2014, Grafana has grown to become the standard for time series analytics, with over 68,000 GitHub stars and a thriving ecosystem of plugins and integrations. The platform allows users to query, visualize, alert on, and understand metrics no matter where they're stored, enabling the creation of... - Source: dev.to / 14 days ago
  • Send Node.js logs from Docker to Grafana Cloud with Alloy
    Navigate to Grafana Cloud and sign up or log in. In the sidebar, select Connections → Add new connection, select Loki. This is the place that prompts you to set up your Loki connection and allows you to generate an access token for Alloy. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Monitoring API Requests and Responses for System Health
    Prometheus + Grafana: Open-source tools that offer maximum flexibility without ongoing licensing costs—ideal for teams willing to manage their own infrastructure and configuration. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • How to Optimize Your Fintech API in 2025: A Guide
    Prometheus: This open-source monitoring solution pairs with Grafana for powerful custom visualization of exactly what matters to your business. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
View more

etcd mentions (32)

  • Unlock your Kubernetes to run custom resource based microservices in any scale
    Unfortunately there is a big problem with custom controllers, they can't handle huge amount of data for several reasons. Kubernetes relies on ETCD for all data storage, which limits scalability, flexibility, and performance for complex or high-volume workloads. What kind of problems I'm talking about? - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • AWS Config vs Kubernetes Native Policy Engines: Who Governs What?
    In Amazon EKS, AWS Config helps you track key components such as: EKS control plane logging, VPC settings and network exposure, encryption status for logs and secrets and IAM roles used by worker node groups. It can detect misconfigurations like: 🚫 Publicly accessible EKS clusters ⚠️ Disabled encryption for secrets stored in Kubernetes ETCD ⚠️ Ensures EKS clusters are running on currently supported versions,. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • The Double-Edged Sword of Microservices: Balancing Abstraction and Complexity
    Using a service discovery mechanism: A service discovery mechanism, such as etcd or ZooKeeper, can help to manage the complexity of microservices by providing a centralized registry of available services and their instances. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Designing a fault-tolerant etcd cluster
    Etcd is an open-source leader-based distributed key-value datastore designed by a vibrant team of engineers at CoreOS in 2013 and donated to Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in 2018. Since then, etcd has grown to be adopted as a datastore in major projects like Kubernetes, CoreDNS, OpenStack, and other relevant tools. Etcd is built to be simple, secure, reliable, and fast (benchmarked 10,000 writes/sec),... - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Kubernetes Cluster Architecture
    Etcd is a key value store for all cluster data. It is an etcd data store. So, It is highly available, reliable, and distributed. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Grafana and etcd, you can also consider the following products

Prometheus - An open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit.

Apache ZooKeeper - Apache ZooKeeper is an effort to develop and maintain an open-source server which enables highly reliable distributed coordination.

Datadog - See metrics from all of your apps, tools & services in one place with Datadog's cloud monitoring as a service solution. Try it for free.

Eureka - Eureka is a contact center and enterprise performance through speech analytics that immediately reveals insights from automated analysis of communications including calls, chat, email, texts, social media, surveys and more.

Zabbix - Track, record, alert and visualize performance and availability of IT resources

Apache Thrift - An interface definition language and communication protocol for creating cross-language services.