Displaying discrete events (ie deployments)

I've been trying to find an example where discrete events get displayed along side regular time series data. What I'm aiming for is being able to overlay deployment events with other app metrics like response times etc.

Is this feature possible with kibana? Or maybe with a plugin?

As an example, there's one at https://codeascraft.com/2011/02/15/measure-anything-measure-everything/

The best solution I've found so far is to record the app instance version as a field, and then split-lines etc over that. It means a line chart is then broken with a gap where the version changes. This essentially achieves what I was looking for.

Is that the only way to go?

Kibana 3 used to let you put markers on the timeline/histogram. Have a look at the Kibana Github issues to see if this hasn't been requested already, and if it hasn't create an issue. I've just had some feedback from users that are really missing this functionality in Kibana 4

Just found it, add a plus one to the issue if it fits your description.

You might also be able to achieve what you're looking for with Timelion