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How to Set Up a Grafana Visualization Dashboard to Monitor Your SonicBit Seedbox in Real Time

SonicBit Team·Mar 5, 2026·6 min read·Tutorials

Your seedbox is downloading, seeding, and transferring files around the clock — but do you actually know what it's doing at any given moment? Storage creeping up? Bandwidth spiking at odd hours? Without visibility, you're flying blind.

Grafana fixes that. It's an open-source visualization tool that turns raw metrics into clean, interactive dashboards. In this tutorial, you'll deploy Grafana on your SonicBit account, wire it up to data sources, and build a live dashboard that shows your bandwidth usage, storage consumption, and download activity — all in real time.

Prerequisites:

A SonicBit account with at least the Vertex plan ($3.49/month) — you'll need a performance app slot for Grafana
Basic comfort navigating web UIs and pasting config values
About 30 minutes

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Step 1: Deploy Grafana from the SonicBit App Store

SonicBit's one-click deployment means you won't touch a terminal or write a single Docker command. Head to the SonicBit dashboard and follow these steps:

Click Apps in the left sidebar
Browse or search for Grafana under the Monitoring category
Click Install — SonicBit handles the container setup, SSL certificate, and subdomain routing automatically
Wait about 30–60 seconds for the app to spin up
Once the status shows Running, click the Open button to launch Grafana

!Grafana app card in SonicBit app store

You'll land on the Grafana login screen. The default credentials are:

Username: admin
Password: admin

Grafana will immediately prompt you to change the password. Do it — don't skip this.

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Step 2: Install Uptime Kuma Alongside Grafana (Optional but Recommended)

If you want to monitor app availability alongside your metrics, deploy Uptime Kuma from the SonicBit app store too. It's a lightweight monitoring tool that tracks whether your apps are up or down. Uptime Kuma exposes a simple JSON status endpoint that Grafana can pull from.

This is optional, but it rounds out your dashboard nicely — especially if you're running a full media stack with Plex, Sonarr, and Radarr.

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Step 3: Configure a Data Source

Grafana visualizes data from external sources — it doesn't collect metrics on its own. You need to point it at something to query. The most common choice for a seedbox monitoring setup is Prometheus (for time-series metrics) or a JSON API data source.

Option A: Using the JSON API Plugin (Easiest)

If you're pulling data from SonicBit's dashboard or custom endpoints, the JSON API plugin is the simplest path. To install it:

In Grafana, go to Configuration → Plugins
Search for JSON API
Click Install

Once installed:

Go to Configuration → Data Sources → Add data source
Select JSON API
In the URL field, enter the endpoint you want to query
Click Save & Test — you should see a green "Data source is working" confirmation

!Grafana data source configuration screen

Option B: Setting Up Prometheus (More Powerful)

For time-series data with historical queries, Prometheus is the right tool. You'd need to deploy a metrics exporter alongside your apps, then point Prometheus at it. Here's a minimal Prometheus config if you're running it locally and forwarding data:

global:
  scrape_interval: 15s

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'seedbox_metrics'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['localhost:9100']

After deploying Prometheus:

In Grafana, go to Configuration → Data Sources → Add data source
Select Prometheus
Set the URL to your Prometheus instance (e.g., http://prometheus:9090)
Click Save & Test

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Step 4: Create Your First Dashboard

Now the fun part. A Grafana dashboard is made up of panels, each showing a specific metric in a specific visualization style (graph, gauge, stat, table, etc.).

Click the + icon in the left sidebar → Dashboard
Click Add a new panel
In the panel editor, select your data source from the dropdown
Write a query — the syntax depends on your data source

For a basic bandwidth gauge using Prometheus and a node exporter, your query might look like:

rate(node_network_receive_bytes_total{device="eth0"}[5m]) * 8

This gives you inbound bandwidth in bits per second over a 5-minute rolling window.

!Grafana panel editor with bandwidth query

Panels to Build for a Seedbox Dashboard

Here's what a solid seedbox monitoring dashboard should include:

| Panel | Visualization Type | What It Shows | |---|---|---| | Current Bandwidth In/Out | Gauge | Real-time upload/download speed | | Bandwidth Over Time | Time Series Graph | Historical network usage | | Storage Used | Stat or Bar Gauge | Current disk usage vs. total | | Active Torrents | Stat | Number of active downloads/seeds | | Top Bandwidth Consumers | Table | Which processes are using the most data | | App Status | Status History | Whether Plex, Sonarr, etc. are up |

For each panel:

Click Add panel
Choose the visualization type from the top-right dropdown
Set your query
Give the panel a clear title
Click Apply

Arrange panels by dragging them around the canvas.

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Step 5: Set Up Automatic Refresh and Alerts

A monitoring dashboard that doesn't auto-refresh isn't much of a monitoring dashboard.

Enable Auto-Refresh

In the top-right corner of your dashboard, click the refresh interval dropdown (it defaults to Off) and set it to 10s or 30s depending on how real-time you need the data.

Set a Time Alert

To get notified when storage hits a threshold:

Open a storage panel → click the panel title → Edit
Go to the Alert tab
Click Create alert rule
Set your condition: e.g., storage_used_bytes > 450GB
Set a notification channel (Grafana supports email, Slack, webhooks, and more)
Click Save

!Grafana alert rule configuration

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Once your panels are arranged how you like:

Click the Save icon (top toolbar) or press Ctrl+S
Give your dashboard a name like "SonicBit Seedbox Monitor"
Click Save

To share it with a teammate or access it from your phone:

Click the Share icon → Link
Copy the URL — anyone with Grafana access can open it
For public sharing (without login), use Snapshot instead

You can also access the Grafana URL directly from the SonicBit dashboard by clicking the Open button on the app card — or grab the URL once and bookmark it on your phone.

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What's Next?

Now that your dashboard is live, here are a few things worth exploring:

Add Uptime Kuma status panels to track whether your apps are responding
Connect Grafana to qBittorrent's API to pull active torrent counts and peer data directly
Build a second dashboard focused purely on storage trends — useful if you're running large media libraries and want to plan upgrades ahead of time
Export your dashboard as JSON so you can reimport it if you ever switch plans or redeploy

If you're running a full media stack (Plex + Sonarr + Radarr + Jackett), having Grafana running alongside it means you'll catch bottlenecks before they become problems — like spotting that your storage is 90% full before Sonarr's next grab fails.

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