March 2016 Summaries

InfluxDB has made several announcements, including the general availability of InfluxDB, Telegraf, Chronograf, and Kapacitor 0.11, as well as training sessions in San Francisco and New York. The company is also hiring a developer/product evangelist and a Bay Area Wordpress administrator. Various videos and tutorials have been released on topics such as getting started with the InfluxDB CLI, migrating large datasets to InfluxDB, and using InfluxDB for IoT projects. Several companies, including Telefónica and XSellco, have adopted InfluxDB for their time-series data needs, citing its ability to handle high volumes of granular data and provide real-time insights. Additionally, InfluxData is hosting several events, including webinars and meetups, and is offering a "hoodie" program for companies using InfluxDB in production.

We're excited to announce that InfluxDB, Telegraf, and Kapacitor 0.11 GA are now available for immediate download, featuring significant improvements to query performance in InfluxDB, enhanced performance and simplified API in Kapacitor, and the addition of UDP and TCP plugins in Telegraf, allowing users to parse multiple data formats and gather additional system metrics.

InfluxDB 0.11.0 RC has been released with significant improvements to the query engine, resulting in performance gains of anywhere from 1.4x to 3.8x faster for many queries. The new query engine also lays the foundation for future query features and provides better stability and performance on larger queries, addressing some previous out-of-memory issues. Additionally, this release includes other improvements such as ARM builds, 21 new features, and 40 bug fixes. Users are encouraged to download the release and report their observations of query performance, and InfluxDB offers support for migration from older versions and virtual/public training options to help users level up their knowledge.

Telegraf 0.11 has been released, featuring support for TCP and UDP input plugins, as well as three new plugins for gathering system metrics: NTP Query, Processes, and Kernel. The release includes various features such as improved InfluxDB retention policies, default timeouts for input plugins, and bugfixes addressing issues with the sensor plugin, Librato output plugin, and others. This update provides users with more flexibility and accuracy in collecting system data, making it a significant improvement over previous versions.

Kapacitor 0.11 RC has been released with significant performance gains, exposing internal metrics and a simplified API for working with functions from InfluxQL. Kapacitor is now up to 4x faster in some cases, allowing users to right-size their instance more accurately. The new release also introduces improved functionality, such as the ability to communicate with multiple InfluxDB clusters and simplify TICKscript usage. With these changes, Kapacitor can act as a Continuous Query engine between different InfluxDB clusters, providing enhanced capabilities for data processing and alert management.

InfluxDB is an open-source time series database platform, developed by InfluxData, which has been improving its features with 88 new features and 133 bug fixes in the latest update. The company aims to monetize its software through cloud offerings, support services, and eventually, closed-source tools for production tasks like administration and monitoring. InfluxDB's clustering functionality will be available as part of a paid Enterprise offering, while the open-source version will focus on providing the best experience and performance as a standalone server. The company plans to release future versions with enhanced query engine and storage capabilities, but clustering will no longer be included in the free open-source software. Instead, users can achieve high availability using pure open-source and subscription options through the InfluxDB Relay project.

Telegraf is an agent that collects metrics from various input channels and writes them to output channels, supporting over 60 plugins for both inputs and outputs. It can be used to monitor system parameters such as CPU, memory, disk usage, and more on the InfluxDB server itself, with the system input plugin capturing these metrics and sending them to an output channel, in this case, InfluxDB. Telegraf's configuration file allows for customization of plugins and settings, including the interval at which data is collected, and can be generated using a command that includes the desired input and output filters. With Telegraf installed on the InfluxDB server, metrics are collected and written to the database, allowing for further analysis and visualization through tools like Chronograf or alerts through Kapacitor.

The TICK Stack is a powerful tool for building IoT projects, especially when combined with the Google Cloud Platform. Kapacitor, part of the TICK stack, is a stream and batch processing engine that can be used to monitor data in real-time. In this tutorial, we have set up Kapacitor on the Google Cloud Platform to create an alerting system for temperature data from IoT sensors. We defined a task using TICKscript, which logs high temperatures to a file and sends notifications to a Slack channel when the temperature exceeds 30 degrees Celsius. The integration of Kapacitor with the Google Cloud Platform provides a scalable and reliable solution for building IoT projects.

Chronograf, part of the TICK stack, is used for visualizing data from InfluxDB, a time series database. It can be set up on any system, including premises or cloud-based, and can run as a standalone application. To use Chronograf, users need to configure it to point to their InfluxDB instance and setup graphs/dashboards. The process involves downloading Chronograf, installing it using Homebrew, starting the application, adding an InfluxDB database instance, creating dashboards and visualizations, and configuring settings such as auto-refresh and time filter. Once set up, users can view real-time data from their temperature stations on a dashboard, with the ability to customize the visualization and add filters. Chronograf is a useful tool for monitoring and analyzing IoT sensor data.