The Multi-Tenant Dashboard Dilemma
Multi-tenancy is a reality for many DevOps and platform teams, especially when managing observability platforms like Grafana. Ensuring secure, isolated data access for multiple tenants often reveals limitations in traditional RBAC solutions, prompting a shift toward more granular methods like LBAC.

This article explores RBAC and LBAC in Grafana, highlighting real-world best practices, pitfalls to avoid, and actionable insights to scale efficiently.

RBAC in Grafana: The Basics

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) assigns permissions based on defined roles (Admin, Editor, Viewer), controlling user actions like dashboard creation or data source management. RBAC excels in simplicity, making it ideal for straightforward access needs in small, single-tenant setups.

Pros:

• Easy to implement
• Well-understood by engineers Cons:
• Quickly becomes unmanageable at scale
• Limited granularity, causing "role explosion" in complex scenarios

What is LBAC (Label-Based Access Control)?

LBAC enhances access control by dynamically filtering data based on labels or attributes at query-time, rather than just static user roles. Grafana recently introduced LBAC for its enterprise data sources, enabling teams to share dashboards safely across tenants by enforcing label-specific policies.

Pros:

• Fine-grained data isolation
• Scalable across multiple tenants without duplicating dashboards or data sources

Cons:

• Initial setup complexity

RBAC alone can quickly lead to unwieldy role management. LBAC complements RBAC by handling data-level permissions dynamically, ensuring each tenant sees only relevant data.

Challenges in Multi-Tenant Grafana with RBAC Only

Teams attempting multi-tenancy with only RBAC encounter significant challenges:

• Role Explosion: Creating numerous roles per tenant quickly becomes unmanageable.
• Security Risks: Shared data sources may inadvertently expose data across tenants due to insufficient query-level restrictions.
• Operational Overhead: Separate Grafana instances or duplicated dashboards are resource-intensive and inefficient.

How LBAC Solves These Challenges

Label-based policies address these challenges head-on:

• Simplified Management: One shared Grafana instance with LBAC reduces overhead.
• Enhanced Security: Dynamic, per-request data filtering ensures tenants only see permitted data.
• Greater Flexibility: Easily onboard new tenants or update policies without structural changes.

RBAC and LBAC Together: Best Practices for Multi-Tenancy

For multi-tenant dashboards, relying solely on RBAC can become complex and ineffective. Combining RBAC with LBAC is a recommended best practice:

Step 1: Establish RBAC Roles and Teams

Start by clearly defining roles such as Admin, Editor, and Viewer. Assign these roles based on specific responsibilities—like dashboard creation, editing, or read-only access—adhering strictly to the principle of least privilege. Group users into teams when possible, regularly reviewing permissions to maintain appropriate access levels.

Step 2: Introduce Label-Based Policies

Enhance security by applying LBAC to dynamically filter data visibility at query-time, using labels like tenant IDs, environment names, customer segments, or project identifiers. Properly labeled metrics and logs ensure that each tenant sees only the data they are authorized to access.

For instance, data sources might include labels such as tenant_id: "tenant123" or environment: "production". Queries automatically enforce these label constraints, providing strict data isolation without manual intervention.

This model scales especially well in shared environments. For instance, a managed service provider running a single Grafana instance can safely serve multiple clients by filtering queries on tenant labels, ensuring strict data isolation without added operational burden.

Step 3: Choose the Right Tool for Enforcement

Grafana Cloud and Grafana Enterprise both offer native RBAC and LBAC features, which are excellent options for organizations already invested in Grafana’s commercial offerings. However, these solutions can quickly become costly, especially for SMBs, smaller teams, or users of Grafana Open Source, which lacks built-in LBAC capabilities.

Tools like Giam offer an efficient alternative. Giam integrates seamlessly with Grafana, providing external enforcement of both RBAC and LBAC without plugins, custom forks, or code changes. Policies are managed centrally and enforced per-request, providing precise and scalable access control.

Benefits of Combining RBAC and LBAC with Giam:

• Centralized Management: All policies managed from a single, intuitive interface.
• Granular Data Isolation: Tenant-specific data is protected at the query-level, eliminating risk of accidental exposure.
• Audit Trail: Detailed logs of data access ensure compliance with security audits.
• Zero Operational Overhead: No separate Grafana instances or duplicate dashboards required—significantly reducing administrative burden.

Looking Ahead: Future Trends

As "zero trust" security gains traction, dynamic access control methods like LBAC are increasingly critical. Expect continuous evolution toward hybrid RBAC+LBAC models, supported by external policy enforcement tools, simplifying secure multi-tenancy at scale.

Conclusion

Which scales better, RBAC or LBAC? The answer: both, used together. RBAC lays a manageable foundation, while LBAC provides granular control needed for secure, scalable multi-tenancy. Solutions like Giam offer seamless integration, avoiding the complexity of custom solutions and empowering DevOps teams to focus on delivering value.

Curious to see RBAC + LBAC in action for your dashboards? Request a demo and experience simpler, more secure multi-tenant dashboards today.