question: VM Operator Rules uses externalURL as Grafana Hostname?

[yukha-dw]

This looks like a typo? As my understanding  $externalURL refers to external VM Alertmanager, not Grafana.

operator/config/alerting/vmoperator-rules.yaml

Line 24 in 8b98d8e

dashboard: "{{ $externalURL }}/d/1H179hunk/victoriametrics-operator?ds={{ $labels.dc }}&orgId=1&viewPanel=16"

It'd be nice if we can configure this or just use default localhost:3000 just like alerts on VictoriaMetrics/VictoriaMetrics
, so hack script on helm chart can generate proper URL
https://github.com/VictoriaMetrics/helm-charts/blob/1eab4633d78a1b7f173e925549beba2b2ad5d9d1/hack/rules-and-dashboards/sync_rules.py#L180-L183

[Haleygo]

The annotation dashboard is meant to link to the vm-operator dashboard in Grafana. And in this case, you should set -external.url in vmalert as the grafana address. But this is just an example, as the dashboard id also changes in different setups.
Feel free to modify the annotation if it doesn’t work for your case.

[yukha-dw]

@Haleygo I see, thank you for you explanation. So what i need to do is setup this, right?

vmalert:
  spec:
    extraArgs:
      external.url: "external.grafana.domain"

[Haleygo]

@Haleygo I see, thank you for you explanation. So what i need to do is setup this, right?

vmalert:
  spec:
    extraArgs:
      external.url: "external.grafana.domain"

Yep.
Please note, the dashboard id 1H179hunk also needs to be updated with the value in your granfana. If you don't want to change it for every setup, you can also add an annotation to use the grafana Explore as:

query: "{{ $externalURL }}/explore?left={"datasource":"VictoriaMetrics","queries":[{"expr":{{ .Expr|jsonEscape|queryEscape }},"refId":"A"}],"range":{"from":"{{ .ActiveAt.UnixMilli }}","to":"now"}}" 

Or you can just use it as the alert source, see this doc.

[yukha-dw]

@Haleygo got it, thank you for your help!

Update: adding args above fix the issue, but Source Link on alert will refer to Grafana too 😅