JaaS and the grafana-operator are not alternatives — they do different jobs and are commonly used together. JaaS produces dashboard JSON from Jsonnet; grafana-operator consumes dashboard JSON and reconciles it into a Grafana instance.

Division of labour

grafana-operator manages Grafana itself. It reconciles GrafanaDashboard, GrafanaDatasource, GrafanaFolder, and related resources into one or more Grafana instances, handling authentication, folder placement, datasource wiring, and drift correction inside Grafana. A GrafanaDashboard can take its dashboard model from inline JSON, a URL, a ConfigMap, a grafana.com dashboard ID, or a remote source.

JaaS evaluates Jsonnet — including grafonnet — and publishes the rendered dashboard JSON as a Flux ExternalArtifact. It knows nothing about Grafana: it renders JSON and stops there.

So the two compose along a clean seam. You author dashboards in grafonnet, JaaS renders them to JSON, and grafana-operator takes that JSON and reconciles it into Grafana. Each tool owns one half of the pipeline and neither reaches into the other’s domain.

When grafana-operator alone is enough

If your dashboards are already plain JSON, or you consume them by grafana.com dashboard ID, or you maintain them in the Grafana UI and export the model, then grafana-operator covers the whole workflow on its own. There is no Jsonnet to render, so there is nothing for JaaS to do. Reach for grafana-operator by itself whenever the dashboard model exists as static JSON.

When to add JaaS

Add JaaS when your dashboards are authored in grafonnet (or any Jsonnet), typically to share panels, variables, and layout helpers across many dashboards instead of duplicating JSON. JaaS turns that Jsonnet into the JSON grafana-operator expects, with the same jsonnet -J vendor import resolution you use locally, so a dashboard renders identically on your workstation and in-cluster. grafana-operator then reconciles the rendered output as it would any other dashboard JSON.

Wiring them together

The grafana-operator project documents the JaaS integration directly, including the GrafanaDashboard configuration that points at a JaaS-rendered artifact: grafana-operator dashboard example with JaaS . Keep all GrafanaDashboard, datasource, and folder configuration on the grafana-operator side; JaaS contributes only the rendering step and the ExternalArtifact it publishes.

The Grafana dashboards tutorial shows the JaaS side — authoring a grafonnet dashboard as a JsonnetSnippet and publishing the rendered JSON.