October 2021 Summaries

Telegraf 1.20.3 has been released with several improvements and security updates. The release includes upgrades for CloudWatch plugin, Ethtool Input Plugin, Intel RDT Input, Internet Speed Input, Kube Inventory Input, MongoDB Input, MySQL Input, Procstat Input, Prometheus Input, SQL Server Input, Webhooks Input, ZFS Input, and Processor plugins. Additionally, external plugins for IBM DB2 and Oracle have been added. The new release also includes integration tests for Azure SQL databases and Azure SQL managed instances.

InfluxData has announced the winners of its second annual Community Awards, recognizing outstanding contributors to its open source projects over the past year. The awards cover five categories: InfluxDB for general contribution; Telegraf for bug fixes and new features; Flux Language for improvements to the language; Community for support, events, and engagement; and a Founder's Choice award. Winners were chosen based on their contributions to the community and their impact on time series data innovation.

The InfluxDays North America 2021 conference brought together the #InfluxDB community to exchange time series acumen and use cases. It included subject-matter-expert led courses, on-demand videos and live sessions. Over two weeks, participants attended trainings, a 2-day conference dedicated to everything InfluxDB and time series data, and the InfluxDB Challenge. The event featured expert speakers discussing topics such as Flux training, Telegraf training, real-life experiences with InfluxDB, and more. Recordings of live sessions will be available on November 5, 2021.

InfluxData has announced new features for its time series platform, InfluxDB, aimed at expediting application building. These enhancements include InfluxDB Notebooks, auto-generated Flux queries, and a Visual Studio Code Extension. The company also introduced new capabilities for InfluxDB Cloud to create a more integrated and intuitive experience for developers. These features aim to eliminate many barriers to application building by creating a more seamless, developer-friendly, and productive experience for working with time series data.

At InfluxDays North America, InfluxData announced new features and capabilities aimed at improving the developer experience. These include InfluxDB Notebooks for testing ideas and creating alerts without writing code, Client Libraries for auto-generating application code in over 10 languages, and a Flux VS Code Extension for writing Flux code with syntax checking, autocompletion, and schema explorer. Additionally, new features were introduced to enhance InfluxDB Cloud, such as the Explicit Schema option for protecting against unwanted changes, API-invocable scripts for defining parameterized Flux scripts that can be invoked in applications, and customization of Flux for time zone and location.

InfluxDays North America 2021 is a virtual conference starting on October 26-27, 2021 (Pacific Time). The event brings together the entire #InfluxDB community for discussions about time series data and related technologies. Registration is free, and attendees will gain insights into InfluxDB's roadmap, innovative use cases across industries, and product tips shared by developers for developers. The conference agenda features speakers from InfluxData, live sessions from community members and customers, on-demand sessions, and a Meet the Experts series. During the event, InfluxData Community Awards 2021 winners will be announced, recognizing outstanding contributions of engineers working on open-source projects. Participants can also join an InfluxDB Challenge for a chance to win cool swag by signing up for a free account and following specific steps.

InfluxDB CLI 2.2.0 has been released with new features and bug fixes. The update includes easier creation of API tokens, support for viewing more than 20 buckets using influx bucket list, and a shorthand flag for the bucket (-b) to influx delete. Additionally, the CLI now detects and warns when the Operator token is changed using influx restore and automatically sets the newly-created connection configuration as active in influx setup. The latest open source release can be found on InfluxData's downloads page.

The article discusses how technology enthusiasts can use InfluxDB Cloud and Telegraf for monitoring their home labs. It explains that InfluxDB is an open-source time series database, while Telegraf is a plugin-driven agent for collecting, processing, aggregating, and writing metrics and events. The author guides readers through the process of setting up a free account with InfluxDB Cloud, choosing plugins to use with Telegraf, and monitoring data using the platform's features like graphing and alerts. The article concludes by encouraging readers to explore other options for collecting metrics with Telegraf and storing them in InfluxDB Cloud.

Telegraf is a plugin-driven agent for collecting, processing, aggregating, and writing metrics and events. It has over 300 plugins ready to use, allowing users to collect metrics from various sources such as applications, cloud services, containers, hardware, IoT devices, and more. Once processed, the collected data can be sent to different data stores, services, and message queues. Telegraf is available for download on a wide range of operating systems and architectures, making it easy to deploy everywhere.

The article discusses how ThingWorx Kepware, a product from PTC, can be used as an OPC server and gateway application to stream OPC tag data directly into InfluxDB, thus solving significant IoT interconnectivity challenges. It also provides information on the implementation of this solution using different messaging or data exchange platforms such as OPC, MQTT, and RESTful APIs. The article further explains how Telegraf can be used to streamline the integration process by collecting, processing, aggregating, and writing metrics. Finally, it outlines various methods available for PTC Kepware users to store tag histories in InfluxDB and make those histories available to users and applications.

The UK Government has set a goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, recognizing the need for drastic transformation in several areas, particularly within the energy sector. To facilitate this transition, the Energy Data Taskforce (EDT) was established to produce recommendations on data availability and transparency. These recommendations include improving data visibility, infrastructure and asset visibility, operational optimisation, open markets, and agile regulation. Critical changes in systems adaptation and data integration are required across the energy sector to enable this transition to a net zero carbon economy. InfluxDB is a trusted time series cloud services platform that can help developers build monitoring, analytics, and visualization applications for better data value extraction and improved security.

Chronograf 1.9.1 has been released with new improvements and fixes. The release includes visualization enhancements such as browser history not being extended without a change in InfluxQL/Flux query, the v.windowPeriod calculation fixed, Flux queries rerun when zooming into cells, and table orientation now respects time format. Multi-organization navigation issues have been resolved, and browser specific issues like Safari failing to display Single Stat cells and Firefox in private mode not displaying query results have been addressed. Security upgrades include the bluemonday component for CVE-2021-29272 and jwt package for CVE-2020-26160. Kapacitor integration improvements include TICKscript names reflecting name task variables, read-only mode for TICKscripts created from templates, and pagination of more than 500 Flux tasks fixed. Packaging changes include renaming Chronograf ARM RPM packages with yum-compatible names. The release was built using golang 1.17.1.

InfluxDB has released maintenance updates for its OSS (Open Source Software) and Enterprise versions 1.8.10. These releases are not the most recent versions, but they contain fixes to support users who do not wish to upgrade to newer versions at this time. The current version of InfluxDB OSS is 2.0.9, while that of Enterprise is 1.9.5. Both editions maintain API compatibility for v1 and v2 read and write APIs. Download links are available on the official website under the "Are you interested in InfluxDB 1.x Open Source?" section for community members. For Enterprise customers, support assistance is required to access these specific releases. Issues or queries can be directed to the InfluxDB Community Slack, Github Repo, or Community Site.

The technology sector struggles with attracting and retaining women, but open-source communities face an even more significant gender disparity. Women make up just 6% of GitHub contributors. Factors contributing to this disparity include unwelcoming language or content, stereotyping, and unsolicited sexual advances. To encourage more women to contribute to open-source projects, it is suggested that strong codes of conduct be implemented, clear contributor license agreements be provided, and more visible female contributions be celebrated. The broader gender disparity in technology starts in school, with only 23% of high school Advanced Placement computer science exams taken by women. Women also face issues such as unequal pay, bro culture, and harassment in the tech industry. To address these challenges, continued investment in encouraging women to lead in technology is needed.

The InfluxDB UI offers a variety of features for time series analysis, data lifecycle management, and visualization. It also simplifies onboarding new users by allowing them to easily leverage Telegraf, a plugin-driven collection agent for collecting, processing, and writing metrics and events. Users can create a Telegraf configuration in the InfluxDB UI, add additional plugins to an existing configuration, and follow setup instructions to install, configure, and start Telegraf.

InfluxData is hosting its annual user conference, InfluxDays North America 2021 Virtual Experience, on October 26-27. The event will feature trainings, on-demand sessions and live keynotes showcasing the impact of time series data across industries. It aims to bring together developers who create applications with time series data and the team that builds InfluxDB, the leading time series platform. Key speakers include InfluxData executives, customers, and community members discussing topics such as IoT, analytics, cloud-native services, and more. The event is free for attendees and will also announce winners of the InfluxData Community Awards.

This article discusses how to pivot data in Flux, a functional language for querying time series databases like InfluxDB. Unlike relational databases that structure data in rows, InfluxDB returns data in a columnar format. The author explains the concept of pivoting data and provides examples on how to use the `pivot()` function in Flux to flip data from having fields in separate rows to having them in separate columns. They also demonstrate other ways to pivot data, such as using tags as columns or combining field names with tag values. The article concludes by providing links to related blog posts and resources for further reading on InfluxDB and its functions.

InfluxDB Enterprise 1.9.5 has been released with several improvements and bug fixes. Key highlights include memory utilization improvement due to advancements in compaction cycle using the TSI index, Flux update from version 0.120.1 to 0.131.0, backup/restore enhancements, security updates, eventual consistency fixes, and logging improvements. There is no corresponding InfluxDB OSS 1.9 release as focus has shifted towards InfluxDB 2.x for the community users.

InfluxDB OSS 2.0.9 has been released with new features, performance improvements, and fixes. The release includes a new Resources API, Flux updates, and optimized series iteration for certain queries. Additionally, the CLI packaging will change in future versions, and Mac OS users should note that this version requires at least go 1.16 and macOS 10.12 Sierra to run. Users are encouraged to join the InfluxDB Community Slack or visit the GitHub Repo for any issues or questions.

Kapacitor 1.6.2 has been released with fixes and improvements. The update includes TICKscript enhancements such as jsonCompact support for alert templates, row templates, and details templates. Flux tasks improvements include automatic creation of an InfluxDB database for Flux task logs and usage of a Flux formatter that preserves comments. Security updates involve remediation of the CVE-2020-26160 vulnerability by updating jwt dependencies. Other improvements include adding the template-id property to the GET /kapacitor/v1/tasks API response and correctly validating connected InfluxDB instances when disable-subscriptions is set to true in the Kapacitor configuration file.

Telegraf 1.20.2 has been released as a maintenance update addressing various issues in previous versions. The new release includes updated dependencies for k8s.io/apimachinery, containerd, consul, testcontainers/testcontainers-go, Azure/go-autorest/adal, and cloud.google.com/go/pubsub modules. It also fixes an insecure certificate validation in Couchbase Input (couchbase), adds a custom time/date format field in Elasticsearch Query Input (elasticsearch_query), and resolves several other issues across different inputs and outputs. The latest Telegraf release can be downloaded from the InfluxData website, and users are encouraged to report any issues or ask questions on the InfluxDB Community Slack, GitHub Repo, or Community site.

The article discusses how to use the NGINX Ingress Controller Template for monitoring purposes in conjunction with InfluxDB. It explains that NGINX is a popular reverse proxy, load balancer, API gateway, cache, and web application firewall used by many busy websites and applications. The InfluxDB community has created an InfluxDB Template to help users monitor their NGINX Controller setup inside their Kubernetes cluster. The article provides instructions on how to install the template using either the InfluxDB UI or the Influx CLI, as well as information about the NGINX Ingress Controller Monitoring Dashboard in InfluxDB and other installation options available at GitHub. It also outlines the environment variables required for Telegraf configuration and provides a note on how to set these variables before running Telegraf. The article concludes by encouraging readers to install the NGINX Ingress Controller Template with a free InfluxDB account if they are ready to combine the capabilities of NGINX with the power of InfluxDB.

In this blog post, Sahas Chitlange shares his journey of joining InfluxData as a full-time software engineer after two internships in Summer 2021. He highlights the positive interview experience with Nathaniel Cook and how it differed from other companies' processes. During his internships on the Flux and Dumplings teams, Sahas found meaningful work and developed an interest in problem-solving using software. Key factors that influenced his decision to join InfluxData full-time include competent teammates, a great team culture, and a discounted insurance plan for pets.

The NVIDIA Jetson Series is a set of embedded starter boards designed for vision AI applications. This blog post series aims to create a vision AI pipeline using Telegraf and InfluxDB to monitor both the hardware and the pipeline itself. Part 1 focuses on monitoring the Jetson device by installing prerequisites, writing a Python script, configuring the Exec Plugin, granting access to Jetson Stats for the Telegraf user, setting up an InfluxDB Cloud account, and configuring the InfluxDB_v2 plugin. The end result is a dashboard displaying core system metrics of the NVIDIA Jetson device.

InfluxData, a leading time series platform creator, will sponsor and exhibit at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2021 from October 11-15 in Los Angeles. The company is one of the largest Kubernetes users and will showcase its use cases through onsite sessions. InfluxData's Kubernetes experts will host various sessions, discussing topics such as improving developer experience with Kubernetes, GitOps computing advancements, and rapid development with InfluxDB.

Jay Clifford joined InfluxData due to its momentum in the industry, commitment to open source technology, his experience in the OT and IoT sector, and a fresh start as a Developer Advocate. He was impressed by InfluxDB's versatility and integration capabilities, which he had used extensively in his previous role. Clifford is excited about contributing to the community and helping others benefit from the Influx platform.