June 2021 Summaries

The article discusses how to use and understand the InfluxDB Cloud Usage Template for monitoring usage and rate-limiting events in your InfluxDB account. It explains what the InfluxDB Cloud Usage Template is, its components, and how to apply it using both CLI and UI. The article also delves into understanding the Flux behind the Usage Dashboard and Cardinality Limit Alert Task, as well as supplementing the data that exists in the Usage page in the InfluxDB UI for more insights into your usage. Additionally, it provides information on how to bypass the InfluxDB Checks and Notifications System using Flux.

Chronograf 1.9.0 has been released with new features such as Kapacitor integration for Flux tasks, Microsoft Teams, ServiceNow, BigPanda, and Zenoss event handlers support, data explorer improvements, expanded configuration options, enhanced security, and more. The release also includes performance improvements and bug fixes.

This article discusses how to send Prometheus remote write metrics into InfluxDB with Telegraf. It provides a step-by-step guide on setting up Telegraf to start listening for metrics and ensuring the Prometheus server is configured to begin remote writing data to the Telegraf instance. The author also explains how to migrate Prometheus remote write metrics from InfluxDB 1.x to 2.0, dual remote write to InfluxDB 1.x and 2.0 from your Prometheus server, and verify the data is flowing into InfluxDB 2.0.

InfluxDB now supports parameterized queries in its v2 Cloud version. Parameterized queries allow users to supply arguments that are then inserted into Flux queries for execution. These queries can currently only be used with the InfluxDB v2 API, but will soon be available on the User Interface as well. The use of parameterized queries helps secure IoT applications and prevent injection attacks while also making it easy to update queries to reflect new buckets, filters or timestamps.

InfluxDB Enterprise 1.9 has been released with several new features and improvements. Key highlights include Flux query management controls, performance enhancements for certain functions, operational metrics expansion, security updates, and the addition of node labels. This release also includes significant performance improvements to SHOW SERIES CARDINALITY InfluxQL queries and additional information about license expiration in the /debug/vars metrics output.

Telegraf 1.19.0 has been released with new features and improvements. The update includes an updated Go version to 1.16.5, linter fixes, and multiple enhancements to the Kafka Output Plugin. Additionally, there are new Inputs such as Alibaba CloudMonitor Service, OpenTelemetry, Intel Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), KNX, SQL, and more. New Outputs include Websocket, SQL, and AWS Cloudwatch Logs. External plugins have also been added, including 389 Directory Server Input Plugin, LDAP organization Input Plugin, X509 CRL Input Plugin, Dnsmasq Input Plugin, BigBlueButton Input Plugin, and Siemens S7 Comm Input Plugin. Lastly, new parsers like Prometheus Remote Write Parser and JSON v2 Parser have been introduced.

InfluxDB OSS 2.0.7 has been released with several fixes and improvements. These include resolving an issue in the web interface's auto-refresh dashboard option, fixing an off-by-one error in query range calculation over partially compacted data, adding validation to the /api/v2/delete endpoint for start and stop times, enhancing logging for NATS streaming server, and enabling use of absolute path for --upgrade-log on Windows. Other improvements include updated Flux version to v0.117.0 and enhanced error handling during influx restore. InfluxQL meta queries now respect query timeouts. For any issues or questions, users are encouraged to join the InfluxDB Community Slack, post in the GitHub Repo or the Community Site.

The call for papers is open for InfluxDays North America 2021 Virtual Experience, which will be held on October 26-27, 2021. This event focuses on the impact of time series data and includes training, on-demand sessions, and live keynotes. The conference is free to attend, but attendees can also purchase a spot for Flux Training. InfluxDays aims to provide knowledge about time series applications and use cases, as well as insights into the InfluxDB platform.

The InfluxDays EMEA 2021 Virtual Experience recently concluded, featuring subject-matter-expert led courses, on-demand videos, and live sessions. Over the course of two weeks, participants engaged in a variety of activities including Flux Training, Telegraf Training, and a two-day conference dedicated to everything InfluxDB and time series data. The event included keynotes from Paul Dix and Tim Hall & Ryan Betts, as well as sessions on topics such as managing dashboards with GitOps, using InfluxDB + Grafana for cryptocurrency monitoring, and creating an ideal industrial IoT monitoring solution. Participants also had the opportunity to engage in the InfluxDays Challenge, which allowed them to showcase their InfluxDB knowledge by completing a set of activities within InfluxDB Cloud.

The inaugural Built on InfluxDB Awards were announced at InfluxDays EMEA 2021 event. These awards aim to recognize the best applications and solutions built with InfluxDB in categories such as Best Integration, Best Visualization, and Best Application. ThingWorx by PTC won the Best Integration Award for its integration of InfluxDB as the data persistence provider for time series data. MoxieWORLD iOS app by MOXIE IoT received the Best Visualization Award for visualizing industrial factory data from various assets in real-time using InfluxDB. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time won the Best Application Award for its use of InfluxDB to handle massive volumes of astronomical and engineering related data.