StatsD InfluxDB backend
A naive InfluxDB backend for StatsD.
It can ship events to InfluxDB using two different strategies which can be used at the same time.
Regular Flush Strategy
StatsD will flush aggregated metrics with a configured interval. This is the regular StatsD mode of operation.
Proxy Strategy
This will map every incoming StatsD packet to an InfluxDB event. It's useful if you want to store the raw events in InfluxDB without any rollups.
CAVEATS
This is pretty young and I do not have much experience with InfluxDB yet. Especially the event buffering and the event mapping might be problematic and inefficient.
InfluxDB is also pretty young and there might be breaking changes until it reaches 1.0.
Please be careful!
Installation
$ cd /path/to/statsd
$ npm install statsd-influxdb-backend
Configuration
You can configure the following settings in your StatsD config file.
graphitePort: 2003 graphiteHost: "graphite.example.com" port: 8125 backends: "./backends/graphite" "statsd-influxdb-backend" influxdb: host: '127.0.0.1' // InfluxDB host. (default 127.0.0.1) port: 8086 // InfluxDB port. (default 8086) version: 08 // InfluxDB port. (default 0.8) ssl: false // InfluxDB is hosted over SSL. (default false) database: 'dbname' // InfluxDB database instance. (required) username: 'user' // InfluxDB database username. password: 'pass' // InfluxDB database password. flush: enable: true // Enable regular flush strategy. (default true) proxy: enable: false // Enable the proxy strategy. (default false) suffix: 'raw' // Metric name suffix. (default 'raw') flushInterval: 1000 // Flush interval for the internal buffer. // (default 1000) includeStatsdMetrics: false // Send internal statsd metrics to InfluxDB. (default false) includeInfluxdbMetrics: false // Send internal backend metrics to InfluxDB. (default false) // Requires includeStatsdMetrics to be enabled.
Activation
Add the statsd-influxdb-backend
to the list of StatsD backends in the config
file and restart the StatsD process.
backends: './backends/graphite' 'statsd-influxdb-backend'
Unsupported Metric Types
Proxy Strategy
- Counter with sampling.
- Signed gauges. (i.e.
bytes:+4|g
) - Sets
InfluxDB Event Mapping
StatsD packets are currently mapped to the following InfluxDB events. This is a first try and I'm open to suggestions to improve this.
Set
StatsD package client_version:1.1|c
, client_version:1.2|c
as Influx event:
name: 'visior' columns: 'value' 'time' points: '1.1' 1384798553000 '1.2' 1384798553001
If you are using Grafana to visualize a Set, then using this query or something similar
SELECT version, count(version) FROM client_version GROUP BY version, time(1m)
Also, to count for the size of unique value, another InfluxDB event is also pushed
name: 'visitor_count' columns: 'value' 'time' points: setlength 1384798553001
Counter
StatsD packet requests:1|c
as InfluxDB event:
Flush Strategy
name: 'requests.counter' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 802 1384798553000
Proxy Strategy
name: 'requests.counter.raw' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 1 1384472029572
Timing
StatsD packet response_time:170|ms
as InfluxDB event:
Flush Strategy
name: 'response_time.timer.mean_90' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 44525761772853184 1384798553000 name: 'response_time.timer.upper_90' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 905 1384798553000 name: 'response_time.timer.sum_90' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 321476 1384798553000 name: 'response_time.timer.std' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 2944171159604542 1384798553000 name: 'response_time.timer.upper' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 998 1384798553000 name: 'response_time.timer.lower' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 2 1384798553000 name: 'response_time.timer.count' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 802 1384798553000 name: 'response_time.timer.count_ps' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 802 1384798553000 name: 'response_time.timer.sum' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 397501 1384798553000 name: 'response_time.timer.mean' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 4956371571072319 1384798553000 name: 'response_time.timer.median' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 483 1384798553000
Proxy Strategy
name: 'response_time.timer.raw' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 170 1384472029572
Gauges
StatsD packet bytes:123|g
as InfluxDB event:
Flush Strategy
name: 'bytes.gauge' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 123 1384798553000
Proxy Strategy
name: 'bytes.gauge.raw' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 'gauge' 123 1384472029572
Proxy Strategy Notes
Event Buffering
To avoid one HTTP request per StatsD packet, the InfluxDB backend buffers the
incoming events and flushes the buffer on a regular basis. The current default
is 1000ms. Use the influxdb.proxy.flushInterval
to change the interval.
This might become a problem with lots of incoming events.
The payload of a HTTP request might look like this:
name: 'requests.counter.raw' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 1 1384472029572 1 1384472029573 1 1384472029580 name: 'response_time.timer.raw' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 170 1384472029570 189 1384472029572 234 1384472029578 135 1384472029585 name: 'bytes.gauge.raw' columns: 'value' 'time' points: 123 1384472029572 123 1384472029580
Backend Metrics
The following internal metrics are calculated for each flush:
statsd.influxdbStats.flush_time
- Time taken to process a complete flush in ms. Excluding the asynchronous HTTP Post.statsd.influxdbStats.http_response_time
- Response time in ms of the InfluxDB HTTP endpoint when POSTing data.statsd.influxdbStats.payload_size
- The size in bytes of the JSON payload.statsd.influxdbStats.num_stats
- The number of metrics sent to InfluxDB in the last flush.
These are added to the set of internal statsd metrics. If both influxdb.includeStatsdMetrics
and influxdb.includeInfluxdbMetrics
are enabled, then these will be sent to InfluxDB when using the flush strategy.
The internal metrics can also can be viewed using the stats
command on the StatsD TCP Admin Interface
Contributing
All contributions are welcome: ideas, patches, documentation, bug reports, complaints, and even something you drew up on a napkin.