February 2020 Summaries

Integrating Particle.io with InfluxDB Cloud is a straightforward process that requires no additional services or customizations beyond what Particle Cloud offers. To set it up, users need to navigate to their Particle Console, click on Integrations, select Webhook, fill out the required form details, and configure the request format, including setting tags and authorization headers. Once completed, users can save their integration and access sample code to trigger the integration, making it a simple process to connect these two services.

A new release of InfluxDB 2.0 Beta is available now, featuring enhancements such as resolving issues with the Stacked Line Graph, updating the Group By in the Data Explorer, fixing minor UI bugs, and updating the Flux library to v0.61.0. This release is not intended for production usage but invites users to provide feedback through the InfluxDB Community Slack and GitHub Repo.

The latest release of Telegraf, version 1.13.4, is now available, featuring improvements to various plugins, including Official packages built with Go 1.13.8, fixes for input error counting and NaN value parsing in Prometheus Input Plugin, support for up to 8192 stats in Ethtool Input, and several bug fixes for SQLServer Input and Prometheus Output. The binaries can be found on the InfluxData downloads page, and users are encouraged to join the community forums or Slack channel for help with any issues.

A new feature release for Chronograf is now available, which includes configuration options to store metadata in etcd instead of boltdb, allowing for high availability configurations. The release also adds a command line flag to disable the Host List page and allows Dashboard Template Variables to be pinned to specific data sources. Additionally, the latest releases can be downloaded for community members, and resources are available on Slack or the community forums for further assistance.

InfluxDB 2.0 introduces a new feature called Community InfluxDB Templates, which allows users to share and collaborate on configuration templates for their entire stack, including InfluxDB buckets, dashboards, queries, alerts, and Telegraf configurations. The templates can be easily applied using a few commands, and users can find a list of available templates in the Community InfluxDB Templates repository. To use a template, users need to create an All Access token and set environment variables, then run the `influx pkg` command with the URL or file path of the template. The template will apply changes to the user's InfluxDB setup, including running Telegraf configurations, and users can view the results in their dashboard. The Community InfluxDB Templates project aims to facilitate collaboration and sharing among InfluxDB users, and users can join the InfluxDB Community Slack and Forums for more information and support.

The tech industry is expected to undergo significant changes by the end of 2020, with three key trends that will be widely recognized by then. InfluxData CEO Evan Kaplan predicts that enterprise technology buying will shift from executives to developers, and companies will move away from one-size-fits-all database approaches. Furthermore, the next generation of businesses is expected to leverage data insights from "dense" instrumentation to drive growth.

InfluxDB Enterprise 1.7.10 has been released with several fixes including addressing corrupt TSM data file renaming failure, concurrent calls to tsm1.Engine.Digest() resulting in a Digest aborted problem, and fixing a defect in the TSI index where a filter using the negated equality (!=) operator could result in no matching series being returned. The release also includes specific fixes for InfluxDB Enterprise such as added logging for meta nodes when errors related to opening the meta state file occur, fixed a defect that occurred during migration from OSS to Enterprise, and addressing issues with removing nodes from the cluster. Users can download the binaries for InfluxDB Enterprise 1.7.10 from the InfluxDB Enterprise portal.

InfluxData is a distributed company with team members located worldwide, fostering a culture of collaboration and embracing differences. Flat Mark, one of their team members, frequently travels between offices in San Francisco, Austin, Texas, and London to connect with colleagues and contribute his marketing expertise. He enjoys various activities, such as barbequing, paddle boarding, and playing foosball, and values the company's flexible PTO policy to unwind. As a distributed team, Influxers rely on Zoom calls and Slack for collaboration but also appreciate in-person meetings, which Flat Mark is participating in while helping prepare for InfluxDays London 2020.

InfluxDB 2.0.0 Beta 4 has been released, resolving a regression issue where some users' dashboards and assets were not displayed after logging in. This new release includes enhancements such as type ahead and auto completion of Flux functions in the browser, support for detecting URLs in tables for linking, and an updated Flux library. Users are encouraged to upgrade from Beta 3 and provide feedback through the InfluxDB Community Slack, GitHub Repo, or Community Site. The latest release can be downloaded here.

A new maintenance release for InfluxDB OSS 1.7.10 is now available, addressing several issues including a fix for corrupt TSM data file renaming failures, concurrent calls to tsm1.Engine.Digest() resulting in Digest aborted and problem renaming tmp digest error message, a defect in the TSI1 index where negated equality (!=) operator could result in no matching series being returned, compaction logic on infrequent cache snapshots, and an issue with multiple blocks for the same series key having values truncated when read into an empty buffer. The release also includes improvements to skip bad TSM files during compaction.

The author has successfully built the world's smallest InfluxDB server on a Giant Board, a single-board computer that runs Linux in a Feather form factor. The board features a Microchip SAMA5D2 ARM Cortex-A5 processor, 128 MB DDR2 RAM, and can be powered via USB or LiPo batteries. With the addition of a microSD card and WiFi Feather Wing add-on, the server boots up and runs Debian Linux, allowing for easy installation of InfluxDB. Although it's too resource-intensive for production use, the author envisions running it as an edge collection and forwarding device or embedded Telegraf agent device, taking advantage of its tiny size and battery power capabilities. The author plans to build a version of InfluxDB 2.0 for ARMv7 and test its performance on this device.

A new release of InfluxDB 2.0 Beta is available now, featuring enhancements such as improved secret management, support for multiple manifest files, and enhanced Group By functionality in the Data Explorer. The release is not intended for production usage and is meant to gather feedback from the community through the InfluxDB Community Slack. Users can download and explore the latest release, report any issues or questions, and provide input on its capabilities and roadmap.

This tutorial demonstrates how to query system stats data from InfluxDB v2.0 using Flux and display the results in real-time in a Jupyter Notebook. The code imports necessary libraries, establishes a connection to the InfluxDB instance, defines a function `source_data` that fetches data from the database and refreshes it at regular intervals, generates an auto-refreshing DataFrame with this function, and creates a visualization using hvPlot to display the CPU usage over time. The tutorial aims to extend the invitation of Jupyter Notebooks to InfluxDB, providing a way to share code, explanations, and visualizations in the same place, making it easier to experiment and analyze data.

The powerful combination of Suricata and Telegraf enables network security monitoring by providing real-time insight into the performance of a security engine, detecting attacks in networks that could lead to significant losses from bandwidth consumption, data theft, to spam and ransomware. Suricata is an open-source security engine capable of real-time intrusion detection, inline intrusion prevention, network security monitoring, and offline packet capture processing. It offers features such as multi-threading, which allows it to scale horizontally and distribute the workload across multiple CPUs. Telegraf's Suricata Input Plugin collects internal performance metrics from Suricata, including captured traffic volume, memory usage, uptime, flow counters, and other key statistics. The plugin enables users to gain real-time insight into their security engine's performance and make adjustments as needed. Proper configuration of the Suricata Input Plugin involves specifying a Unix socket location for data delivery, which may differ between Suricata configurations and Telegraf settings. In this case, the difference in socket locations is due to the operating system and environment used by OPNsense 20 (Keen Kinfisher). The issue with Telegraf being unable to read from the socket is likely caused by the address already being in use, which can be resolved by adjusting the socket location or using alternative methods to access the data.

Telegraf 1.13.3 is a new maintenance release that includes improvements to several plugins, including Agent, Kibana Input, Ethtool Input, Prometheus Output, and fixes for various issues such as duplicate tracking IDs in queue consumer plugins, compatibility with Kibana versions greater than 6.4, and support for up to 4096 entries in the Ethtool Input plugin. The release also ensures that expired metrics are removed from Prometheus output even when no new data is sent. The binaries for this latest release can be found on InfluxData's downloads page.

InfluxData has announced the availability of its time series platform, InfluxDB Cloud, on Google Cloud, empowering developers and businesses with a powerful analysis of high volumes of time-sensitive data. The strategic partnership provides unified billing, support, and integration with other Google Cloud services, such as BigTable, PubSub, and Stackdriver. InfluxDB Cloud is a serverless, purpose-built time series database-as-a-service with advanced analytics that provide real-time observability into IoT and DevOps workloads. With usage-based pricing, customers can derive new insights from their data without worrying about added costs or application unavailability. The partnership aims to deliver best-in-class, open-source centric data solutions to customers and increase accessibility to all developers.

InfluxDB Cloud is now available on Google Cloud, offering a serverless cloud platform for time series data that automatically handles elastic scaling and pricing based on data size, rather than machine size. The service integrates with a wide range of Google services, including Stackdriver, Google Kubernetes Engine, PubSub, Cloud Build, Compute Engine, IoT Core, MQTT, BigTable, and more. InfluxDB Cloud provides real-time observability, flexible monitoring, time series AI capabilities, and unlimited scalability without overprovisioning or underprovisioning risks. The service has a free tier with higher limits for writes and queries, as well as lower prices for usage-based customers, effective February 1st.