September 2025 Summaries

InfluxDB 3.5 has been released, offering significant enhancements to both its Core and Enterprise versions, including updates to the Explorer UI for improved data organization and querying. Notable features in this release are the introduction of Explorer Dashboards in beta, which allow users to save and manage preferred queries, and new cache querying capabilities that provide quick access to recent and unique time series data without full-table scans. The Core version remains free and open source, optimized for recent data, while the Enterprise version supports extensive historical queries, high availability, and multi-node deployments. The update also includes smarter operational tools for cluster management, such as queryable CLI parameters, manual node management, and tightened security with enhanced token permissions and TLS verification. These improvements aim to bolster performance, security, and ease of use for time series monitoring and analysis.

Telegraf 1.36 introduces new plugins and updates to enhance data collection and processing capabilities. Key additions include the Turbostat service input plugin, which gathers metrics from the Linux turbostat service, and the Round processor, which rounds metrics to a specified precision. Notable updates include the transition of OpenTelemetry profiles support from version 1 experimental to version 1 development, affecting metric output by changing the reporting and formatting of certain fields. Additionally, support for evaluating certificates in Windows machine and user stores via x509_certs has been introduced. Users can download the latest release from the Telegraf Downloads page and seek support or further learning through InfluxDB's community resources and educational courses.

Nexus BMS is an advanced building management system that transcends traditional solutions by integrating real-time monitoring, direct equipment control, and predictive AI diagnostics into a unified platform, capable of transforming building automation from reactive to proactive management. Unlike conventional systems that merely collect and display sensor data, Nexus actively controls building equipment using time series data to detect issues early and adjust operations automatically, enhancing reliability, efficiency, and safety in diverse environments such as clean rooms and healthcare facilities. This system utilizes InfluxDB for time series data management, NodeJS for backend programming, and Raspberry Pi controllers for executing control commands, supported by AI models trained with historical data to enable predictive maintenance. The use of open-source hardware and modern data infrastructure empowers Nexus to continuously process thousands of sensor readings and apply custom control logic, ensuring optimal performance and preemptive issue resolution, thereby providing a robust solution for facility managers dealing with challenges such as broken controllers and rising licensing fees.

A modern streaming data pipeline utilizing Kafka, Telegraf, and InfluxDB 3 Core efficiently handles high-velocity data, exemplified through a fictional pizza restaurant, Papa Giuseppe's Pizzeria. In this setup, Kafka acts as a reliable order board, managing event data such as customer orders and oven temperatures, with Telegraf processing and transforming these events into actionable insights. InfluxDB 3 Core records completed data entries as a time series, enabling detailed tracking of performance metrics. A custom dashboard or Grafana provides real-time operational awareness by displaying active orders, efficiency scores, and potential equipment failures. This architecture, akin to a restaurant's organized workflow, can be applied to various real-time applications, including industrial IoT and financial systems, ensuring scalability and reliability in managing continuous data streams.

Organizations are increasingly challenged to modernize their data infrastructure without disrupting daily operations, especially with the growing need for real-time analytics and advanced data processing. Traditional data historians, which have been used to store time-stamped machine and sensor data for reliability and compliance, are limited in their ability to handle modern workloads. The solution lies in augmenting existing systems with parallel data pipeline architectures, where data is streamed simultaneously into both a historian and a time series database like InfluxDB. This approach allows businesses to maintain their stable systems of record while gaining real-time visibility and analytics capabilities without the cost or risk of a full system replacement. By implementing techniques such as simultaneous ingestion, stream processing, and data validation, organizations can enhance their operational efficiency, reduce costs, and improve decision-making without compromising compliance and reliability. This strategy, which has been successfully applied in sectors like energy, helps organizations stay competitive and agile in a data-driven world.

Modernizing industrial data strategies involves balancing the use of legacy systems like data historians with new technologies such as time series databases. While historians have been pivotal since Industry 3.0 for reliable data integration and operational stability, they fall short in meeting the demands of Industry 4.0, which requires open standards, scalable storage, and advanced analytics. InfluxDB 3, a time series database, offers these modern capabilities with its open architecture, allowing seamless integration with analytics stacks and reducing vendor lock-in. It supports real-time insights and efficient long-term storage, thus complementing the strengths of historians. Pairing historians with InfluxDB 3 allows businesses to retain the stability of their existing systems while extending their capabilities into analytics and AI, facilitating a gradual and low-risk modernization process. This approach maintains operational reliability while enabling new insights and innovations, aligning with long-term business growth without the need for disruptive overhauls.

InfluxDB 3 Enterprise offers an enhanced version of InfluxDB 3 Core, designed to support production workloads with features such as high availability, long-range query support, and advanced security measures. Upgrading to Enterprise is a seamless process due to its modern architecture and simple installation, allowing users to scale their time series infrastructure effectively. Key benefits include fast queries over large historical data ranges, multi-node deployment with read replicas and dedicated roles, and improved security through fine-grained access controls and expiring tokens. The Enterprise version supports over 100 databases and 10,000 tables, with a read/write separation to enhance performance by isolating workloads. The software separates compute from storage, allowing data to be stored independently in Parquet files via local or remote storage options like AWS S3, Azure Blob, or Google Cloud Storage. Licensing for InfluxDB 3 Enterprise is based on the number of CPU cores per cluster, offering different capabilities and restrictions depending on the license type, with a free 30-day trial and an option for a home-use free license. Users can easily transition from Core to Enterprise without moving data, and the system supports scalability through cloud storage and multi-node setups.