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Getting Started — Your First Weathermap

This guide walks you from an empty dashboard to a live weathermap showing traffic between two devices. It should take about 10 minutes.

Prerequisites

  • Grafana 11.0.0 or later with the Network Weathermap NG panel installed (see Installation).
  • At least one data source (Prometheus, InfluxDB, Zabbix, or any Grafana-compatible source) returning time-series interface counters (e.g. bits/sec in and out of an interface).

1. Create the panel

  1. Open or create a dashboard and click Add → Visualization.
  2. In the visualization picker, search for Network Weathermap and select it.
  3. You now have an empty weathermap canvas and, on the right, the panel options.

The map has two states:

State How you get there What you can do
Edit mode The panel edit screen (where you are now) Add/move/delete nodes and links, drag VIAs, zoom
View mode A saved dashboard Hover for tooltips, click nodes/links that have dashboard links

2. Add your data queries

Weathermap doesn't query data itself — it reuses the panel's queries. In the Queries tab (below the panel), add the metrics you want to visualize. A typical link needs two series:

  • Outbound (A → Z) — e.g. interface bits sent
  • Inbound (Z → A) — e.g. interface bits received

Give queries readable names

Weathermap identifies a series by its display name. Use a query refId or a transform/legend so each series has a clear, unique name — you'll pick it from a dropdown later.

3. Add your devices (nodes)

  1. In the panel options, open the Nodes section.
  2. Click Add Node. A node appears in the middle of the canvas.
  3. Set its Label (e.g. SW-CORE).
  4. Drag the node on the canvas to position it. (Hold nothing — just click-drag in edit mode.)
  5. Repeat for a second device (e.g. BKB-CARPINA).

See Nodes (Devices) for icons, status coloring, and per-node tooltips.

  1. Open the Links section and click Add Link.
  2. Set A Side to your first node and Z Side to the second.
  3. Under A Side Options, set A Side Query to your outbound series and, optionally, A Bandwidth # (or A Bandwidth Query) to the link capacity so utilization can be shown as a percentage.
  4. Under Z Side Options, set Z Side Query to your inbound series and its bandwidth.

The link now colors itself according to utilization, and arrows show direction. See Links for units, direction labels, and more.

5. Set the color scale

  1. Open the Color Scale / Thresholds section (panel options).
  2. Add thresholds mapping a percentage (or absolute value) to a color — for example 0% → green, 50% → yellow, 80% → orange, 95% → red.

Links and the legend now reflect these bands.

6. Save and use it

  1. Click Apply / Save dashboard.
  2. In view mode, hover a link to see a tooltip with usage, bandwidth, throughput %, and a mini time-series graph.
  3. Hover a node to see any extra metrics you configured.

Where to go next

  • Nodes (Devices) — icons, status colors, node tooltips, dashboard links
  • Links — queries, units, direction labels, port labels, parallel links, VIAs
  • Panel Options — background image, value display modes, timeline slider, tooltips
  • Interactions & Editing — pan/zoom/select on every OS, VIA editing, export
  • Use Cases — end-to-end scenarios (capacity planning, incident retros, floor plans)