October 2016 Summaries

InfluxDB Week in Review: Oct 31, 2016` Mika Meyer from InfluxData is summarizing the most interesting content related to InfluxDB over the last week or so. In this post, they highlight various announcements, blog posts, videos, and how-to guides featuring InfluxDB's capabilities, such as its speed, ease of use, and scalability. The company also shares testimonials from notable customers like Capital One, which has been using Grafana with InfluxDB for viewing perfect testing metrics. Additionally, InfluxData announces the addition of multi-tenant support for Grafana on InfluxDB Cloud, allowing users to configure access to different groups and users in their organization. The post also features a call-to-action, inviting companies that use InfluxDB in production to be featured on influxdata.com and receive a "thank you" gift - an InfluxDB hoodie and stickers.

InfluxData's Q&A Session for Oct 20: Intro to Kapacitor for Alerting and Anomaly Detection` The session covered introductory topics about Kapacitor, a component of the InfluxDB platform, specifically its use in alerting and anomaly detection. The key takeaway from this Q&A session is that choosing between batch and stream processing depends on how you want to process your data, with batching being suitable for grouping data into time-bound buckets and streaming being ideal for real-time processing. Kapacitor's TICK script language was also discussed, highlighting the importance of variable naming conventions which are typically defined by the source data in InfluxDB. The session concluded with a discussion on why Kapacitor was created as a DSL, aiming to integrate well with InfluxDB and provide a new syntax that doesn't rely on existing script languages.

In this weekly post, we recap common issues with basic syntax and TICK-stack related issues in InfluxDB, including configuring returned timestamps to be in second-precision epoch time, backfilling results for continuous queries, and accessing error documentation. The CLI returns timestamps in nanosecond format by default, but can be changed to seconds using the `precision` command. Continuous Queries operate on real-time data and do not automatically backfill older data, requiring a basic INTO query to fill gaps. InfluxDB has created a new documentation page for error messages and causes, providing users with more resources to troubleshoot issues.

InfluxDB Week in Review Oct 24, 2016` recap includes announcements of new features such as multi-tenant support for Grafana on InfluxDB Cloud, allowing configurable access to different groups and users. The company also offers virtual training playback archive, free webinars on topics like the TICK stack and InfluxDB fundamentals, and a "Mastering the InfluxDB CLI and Configuration File" webinar. Customers such as Ten-X and ToolsLib share their experiences with using InfluxDB for managing logs and storing billion of points, respectively. Additionally, Ohnew Innovation provides custom monitoring using InfluxDB and Grafana, while InfluxData encourages companies to feature their applications on influxdata.com in exchange for a free InfluxDB hoodie.

InfluxDB is a time-series database that can be used to store and query large amounts of data, particularly those with temporal relationships. The database has various features such as Continuous Queries (CQs) which allow for real-time calculations on the data stored in it. Shard group duration recommendations are crucial for efficient data storage and retrieval, and InfluxDB provides guidelines for configuring shard group durations based on retention policies and query time ranges. Users can configure shard groups to have at least 100,000 points per shard group and 1,000 points per series to optimize performance. Additionally, users can use the HTTP API to query data from non-DEFAULT retention policies by fully qualifying measurements in the query's FROM clause with their database and retention policy names.

InfluxDB recently shared its weekly review, highlighting various announcements, blog posts, videos, and how-to guides from the last week. The company announced multi-tenant support for Grafana on InfluxDB Cloud, allowing customers to configure access to different groups and users in their organization to view data with their own dashboards. Several customers, including Klipfolio and BBOXX, shared their success stories with InfluxDB, showcasing its capabilities in monitoring anomalies, storing large amounts of data, and providing fast response times. Additionally, InfluxDB highlighted the achievements of TurnCommerce, which set up near-real-time instrumentation on a massive DNS installation, and encouraged companies using InfluxDB to claim their "InfluxDB Hoodie" by submitting a form on its website. The company also announced free virtual training playbacks and in-person training dates for those interested in learning more about InfluxDB.

InfluxData's Q&A Session for Oct 13: Intro to InfluxDB Telegraf and the Plugin Ecosystem` is a recap of the Q&A session during a training session, covering various topics related to InfluxDB, Telegraf, and their plugin ecosystem. The training focused on answering questions about telegraph's timestamp assignment, high availability, exec process management, and running telegraf in Docker for system-level monitoring. Additionally, it mentioned the need for future development of tracking child processes in the exec plugin and recommended looking at published Docker guides for exposing required endpoints and volumes for system-level monitoring with Telegraf from inside a container.

InfluxDB users encountered several issues in the last week, including mixing aggregate functions with non-aggregate queries, which resulted in an error due to InfluxDB's syntax limitations. Additionally, users tried to update Continuous Queries after creation but found that this is not currently supported by InfluxDB. Furthermore, users experienced errors when inserting data into InfluxDB due to incorrect timestamp formatting, which was caused by a syntax error resulting from whitespace sensitivity in the line protocol. To resolve these issues, users need to adjust their queries and data insertion syntax according to InfluxDB's specifications, such as separating fields with commas instead of spaces.

Announcing Multi-Tenant Grafana Support for InfluxDB Cloud Service` InfluxDB Cloud is now offering dedicated instances of Grafana, allowing customers to configure access to different groups and users in their organization to view information with their own dashboards. This new feature is available to all InfluxDB Cloud customers at a monthly cost of $200. Customers can set up multi-tenant support for Grafana by choosing the option in their InfluxDB Cloud dashboard and configuring users and organizations in the Grafana Server Admin page. The service aims to simplify data analysis, improve business insights, automate processes, and offer good value without the hassle of setting up an environment to host InfluxDB. By leveraging InfluxDB Cloud, customers can focus on development while minimizing operational concerns.

InfluxDB Week in Review Oct 10, 2016` The InfluxDB team has announced several new features and updates, including the availability of Kapacitor on InfluxDB Cloud, a fully managed instance of Kapacitor starting at $200 per month. This allows users to create and enable TICKscripts on the cloud using Kapacitor's API. Additionally, the company is offering a free virtual training playback archive and two upcoming webinars: "Intro to Telegraf and the Plugin Ecosystem" on 10/13 and "Intro to Kapacitor for Alerting and Anomaly Detection" on 10/20. The team is also seeking companies using InfluxDB in production, with a call to action for them to submit their application or product for feature promotion on influxdata.com. As a thank you, the company will send an InfluxDB hoodie and stickers to featured companies.

In this weekly post, InfluxDB shares tips on how to create a subsample with a continuous query, workarounds for changing field data types, and answers to frequently asked questions about Continuous Queries and other topics related to InfluxDB. Currently, InfluxDB offers limited support for changing a field's data type, but users can use workarounds such as writing the new data type to a different field or using the shard system. To avoid gaps in data coverage with Continuous Queries, users must increase the `FOR` duration to match the execution interval. Additionally, Continuous Queries require an aggregation function, but users can use selector functions to satisfy this requirement without changing the data.

In this week's review, we covered various announcements, including the availability of Kapacitor on InfluxDB Cloud, which offers fully managed instances starting at $200 per month. Additionally, we highlighted a testimonial from eBay, which utilizes InfluxDB and Grafana for their experimentation environment to measure data quality metrics daily. Furthermore, we promoted two free webinars on performance tuning and schema design, as well as an in-person training program. We also encouraged users to claim their InfluxDB hoodie by submitting a form and sharing their company's use of InfluxDB.