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Getting Started with Telegraf |
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Telegraf is an agent written in Go for collecting metrics and writing them into InfluxDB or other possible outputs. This guide will get you up and running with Telegraf. It walks you through the download, installation, and configuration processes, and it shows how to use Telegraf to get data into InfluxDB.
Follow the instructions in the Telegraf section on the Downloads page.
Note: Telegraf will start automatically using the default configuration when installed from a deb package.
- macOS Homebrew:
/usr/local/etc/telegraf.conf
- Linux debian and RPM packages:
/etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf
- Standalone Binary: see the next section for how to create a configuration file
Before starting the Telegraf server you need to edit and/or create an initial configuration that specifies your desired inputs (where the metrics come from) and outputs (where the metrics go). There are several ways to create and edit the configuration file.
Here, we'll generate a configuration file and simultaneously specify the desired inputs with the -input-filter
flag and the desired output with the -output-filter
flag.
In the example below, we create a configuration file called telegraf.conf
with two inputs:
one that reads metrics about the system's cpu usage (cpu
) and one that reads metrics about the system's memory usage (mem
). We specify InfluxDB as the desired output.
telegraf -sample-config -input-filter cpu:mem -output-filter influxdb > telegraf.conf
Start the Telegraf server and direct it to the relevant configuration file:
macOS Homebrew
telegraf --config telegraf.conf
sudo service telegraf start
systemctl start telegraf
Once Telegraf is up and running it will start collecting data and writing them to the desired output.
Returning to our sample configuration, we show what the cpu
and mem
data look like in InfluxDB below.
Note that we used the default input and output configuration settings to get these data.
- List all [measurements](/{{< latest "influxdb" >}}/concepts/glossary/#measurement) in the
telegraf
[database](/{{< latest "influxdb" >}}/concepts/glossary/#database):
> SHOW MEASUREMENTS
name: measurements
------------------
name
cpu
mem
- List all [field keys](/{{< latest "influxdb" >}}/concepts/glossary/#field-key) by measurement:
> SHOW FIELD KEYS
name: cpu
---------
fieldKey fieldType
usage_guest float
usage_guest_nice float
usage_idle float
usage_iowait float
usage_irq float
usage_nice float
usage_softirq float
usage_steal float
usage_system float
usage_user float
name: mem
---------
fieldKey fieldType
active integer
available integer
available_percent float
buffered integer
cached integer
free integer
inactive integer
total integer
used integer
used_percent float
- Select a sample of the data in the [field](/{{< latest "influxdb" >}}/concepts/glossary/#field)
usage_idle
in the measurementcpu_usage_idle
:
> SELECT usage_idle FROM cpu WHERE cpu = 'cpu-total' LIMIT 5
name: cpu
---------
time usage_idle
2016-01-16T00:03:00Z 97.56189047261816
2016-01-16T00:03:10Z 97.76305923519121
2016-01-16T00:03:20Z 97.32533433320835
2016-01-16T00:03:30Z 95.68857785553611
2016-01-16T00:03:40Z 98.63715928982245
Notice that the timestamps occur at rounded ten second intervals (that is, :00
, :10
, :20
, and so on) - this is a configurable setting.
That's it! You now have the foundation for using Telegraf to collect metrics and write them to your output of choice.