Lab Goal

To gain an understanding of the Perses project.

Introduction - Early beginnings

Perses is an exploration into finding an open source standard for visualization and dashboards, initially for metrics monitoring. It started as a Linux Foundation project and later promoted into the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) as a Sandbox project.

Introduction - What is the Perses project?

Since joining the CNCF, Perses has continued to grow its presence as the first observability dashboard + visualization project. Some links to explore:

• Perses project overview
• Perses contributing guide
• First commit: 26 Jan 2021 (Augustin Husson)

Introduction - Perses project goals (1/2)

1. Become an open standard dashboard visualization tool
• Have well-defined dashboard definition model
• Statically validated dashboards with CLI and CUE schemas
• GitOps compatible for dashboard-as-code workflows
• Perses runs locally, edit dashboard JSON file in Git
2. Provide embeddable charts and dashboards in any user interface
• Provide different NPM packages
• Example usage could be to improve graph display in Prometheus (or embed)

Introduction - Perses project goals (2/2)

3. Target Kubernetes (k8s) native mode
• dashboard defs deployed into & read from app namespaces (CRDs)
4. Provide complete static validation for CI/CD pipelines
   • To be friendly to Dashboard-as-Code users, by providing a complete static validation of the dashboard format
   • Provide command line client: percli
5. Support plugins, to allow users to extend the capacities natively provided

Chat with Perses project team?

On Slack channel: #perses-dev

Introduction - Perses CNCF project

In March 2024 Perses applied to become a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Sandbox project. Currently, the CNCF has no dashboard or visualization solution in the Observability area. Being part of the CNCF provides the project visibility and end users with an alternative to vendor visualization observability.

Introduction - New kid in the sandbox

In the third week of August 2024, the CNCF officially opened up voting on the Perses application . In less than two weeks time the required threshold of 66% of the voting members was reached, along with almost 100 non-binding votes from the community, and Perses is officially the new kid in the CNCF Sandbox!

Introduction - Perses demo and docs

Perses has online documentation included with the project website and also provide a Perses demo instance to explore after logging in:

Lab completed - Results

We gained a basic understanding of the Perses project.

Next up, installing Perses project on your machine...

• Getting started with cloud native o11y workshops
• Perses project repository
• This workshop project repository
• O11y workshop collection
• Report an issue with this workshop

Contact - are there any questions?

Eric D. Schabell
Director Evangelism
Contact: @ericschabell {@fosstodon.org) or https://www.schabell.org

Up next in workshop...

Lab 2 - Installing Perses