InfluxDB is a time-series database that is better than relational databases like Postgres and document databases like MongoDB at collecting time series data. Time series data is information for which you want to track the history of change over time, such as temperature, CPU utilization, or stock prices. Telegraf is an agent platform that collects time-series data and sends it to InfluxDB, which then stores the data for later analysis and presentation. To get started with InfluxDB and Telegraf on a Mac, you need to sign up for a free account of InfluxDB Cloud 2.0, load data into InfluxDB using Telegraf, create a configuration, and install Telegraf using Homebrew. You also need to set the INFLUX_TOKEN system variable and copy/paste the telegraf command along with your unique connection URL. Once you have done this, Telegraf starts monitoring various system metrics, and you can see a chart of the data in the Data Explorer.