Telegraf to M3 to Grafana® Example
Aiven for M3 + Telegraf set up
At a high level, here is how to set up Telegraf to push metrics to Aiven for M3.
- Log into Aiven Console and create an Aiven for M3 Service.
- Install and configure Telegraf Agent.
- Setup Aiven for Grafana® instance for visualization of telegraph metrics.
Create Aiven for M3 service
If you don't have an existing Aiven account, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial with $300 credits using the Aiven Console link.
Within your existing Aiven project, create a new M3 service.
- Log in to the Aiven web console.
- Follow create a new Aiven for M3DB®.
Open the newly created M3 service and select the InfluxDB® tab in the Connection information section. You will use several values from this page including the Service URI, user, and password. You will need these values when configuring Telegraf in the next section.
Install Telegraf
To simplify this example, we will install the Telegraf agent on a MacBook to collect the system metrics. Of course, Telegraf can also be installed on Windows and Linux machines.
Assuming you have Homebrew installed on a MacBook, simply run the following command at the Terminal to install Telegraf (https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/telegraf):
brew update && brew install telegraf
Configure Telegraf and integrate it with M3
Use the Telegraf agent to generate a default configuration file for editing:
telegraf config > telegraf.conf
Modify the telegraf.conf
configuration file to change the output
endpoint to that of our M3 instance.
Change the URL under the outputs.influxdb
section to that of your
Aiven for M3 service (see above). NOTE: The URL prefix should simply
be https://
and remove the username:password
from the URI (see
snippet below).
Specify the service username/password and set the database name to
default
(the database that is automatically created when your service
is provisioned):
[[outputs.influxdb]]
urls = ["https://my-M3-service-my-project.aivencloud.com:24947/api/v1/influxdb"]
database = "default"
skip_database_creation = true
username = "avnadmin"
password = "my_service_password"
Finally, start Telegraf using the configuration file and begin sending system metrics to M3 by running the command below:
telegraf -config telegraf.conf
Wait 10 seconds or so (the default collection interval) to see if there are any error messages displayed in the terminal:
MacBook-Pro tmp % telegraf -config telegraf.conf 2021-10-08T01:21:15Z I! Starting Telegraf 1.20.1 2021-10-08T01:21:15Z I! Loaded inputs: cpu disk diskio kernel mem processes swap system 2021-10-08T01:21:15Z I! Loaded aggregators: 2021-10-08T01:21:15Z I! Loaded processors: 2021-10-08T01:21:15Z I! Loaded outputs: influxdb 2021-10-08T01:21:15Z I! Tags enabled: host=MacBook-Pro 2021-10-08T01:21:15Z I! [agent] Config: Interval:10s, Quiet:false, Hostname:"MacBook-Pro", Flush Interval:10s
Create Aiven for Grafana service
- In the Aiven Console , and access the M3DB service.
- In the Service integrations section, select Manage integrations.
- On the Integrations page, select Grafana Metrics Dashboard to establish a connection between your M3 instance and a new Grafana dashboard service.
- In the pop-up modal, select New service and select Continue.
- Fill out the required details and follow similar steps to create the service. This will initiate the startup process for your Aiven for Grafana service, which will automatically connect to the M3 database to display metrics.
- On the Integrations page on your M3DB service, you will find a link to the Grafana dashboard. Select the link to view the new Grafana service.
- Once service is running, select the Service URI and login with the user / password from the connection information.
Visualizing metrics
Now to what we all have been waiting for, the Metrics!
In the Grafana dashboard, click the Explore tab.
Select your M3 service as the data source from the drop down menu at the
top of the page. Click the metrics browser, select cpu_usage_user
, and
then click the "Use Query" button.
The chart displayed below represents the CPU of the MacBook.
Tear Down At the terminal, press Ctrl+C
to stop the Telegraf agent.
Then, delete your M3 and Grafana services within the Aiven Console.