Sorting metrics for Grafana bar gauge doesn't work

Question

I want to display a metric in Grafana as a (horizontal) bar gauge with sorted values. I'm aware that the bar gauge itself doesn't provide a sorting mechanism, so I'm using the respective PromQL funtion:

sort_desc(rate(my_metric[5m]))

But the panel remains unsorted:

Why does Grafana ignore the sorting, and how do I fix it?

Answer 1

Most likely you have the type in the panel options set to "Range" (the default). Change it to "Instant" and sorting should work the way you expect.