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The easiest way to install InfluxDB & Grafana and configure them to work with Collectd is through using pre-built InfluxDB & Grafana containers. Manual installation steps are detailed further below.

Overview of Pre-built InfluxDB & Grafana Containers

The barometer-influxdb image is based on the influxdb:1.3.7 image from the influxdb dockerhub. To view detils on the base image please visit https://hub.docker.com/_/influxdb/ Page includes details of exposed ports and configurable enviromental variables of the base image.

The barometer-grafana image is based on grafana:4.6.3 image from the grafana dockerhub. To view details on the base image please visit https://hub.docker.com/r/grafana/grafana/ Page includes details on exposed ports and configurable enviromental variables of the base image.

The barometer-grafana image includes pre-configured source and dashboards to display statistics exposed by the barometer-collectd image. The default datasource is an influxdb database running on localhost but the address of the influxdb server can be modified when launching the image by setting the environmental variables influxdb_host to IP or hostname of host on which influxdb server is running.

Additional dashboards can be added to barometer-grafana by mapping a volume to /opt/grafana/dashboards. Incase where a folder is mounted to this volume only files included in this folder will be visible inside barometer-grafana. To ensure all default files are also loaded please ensure they are included in volume folder been mounted. 

Installation & Configuration of Pre-built InfluxDB & Grafana Containers

To avoid duplication, detailed up to date steps are provided in the Barometer Docker User Guide. The steps mentioned have been verified for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04 & Centos 7.5.

Steps related to scalable deployment of Collectd, InfluxDB & Grafana across multiple nodes is also documented.

Manual Installation of InfluxDB & Grafana

I would recommend installing collectd, influx and grafana on a second server to let you capture and graph the displays over time…

Note: you  you only need collectd on this second server – for the types definition

On the DUT

So on the DUT you will need to configure collectd to send the metrics it collects to the server running influx + grafana using the network plugin:

<Plugin "network">

    Server "influx server ip" "25826"

</Plugin>

, so you could copy this from any server that has collectd installed

Note: The following steps are recommended for Ubuntu 16.04

On the Influx/Grafana server:

 AS ROOT:

Configure Influxdb repos and install it:

$ curl -sL https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdb.key | sudo apt-key add -

This will create a file called “/etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdb.list” if it worked.

...

$ source /etc/lsb-release
$ echo "deb https://repos.influxdata.com/${DISTRIB_ID,,} ${DISTRIB_CODENAME} stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdb.list

Install Influx

$ apt-get update && apt-get install influxdb

Modify the collectd influx configuration

make sure the "typesdb" option is pointing to the collectd types.

search and modify the [[collectd]] block

$  sudo vi /etc/influxdb/influxdb.conf
 
[[collectd]]
  enabled = true
  bind-address = ":25826" # the bind address
  database = "collectd" # Name of the database that will be written to
  retention-policy = ""
  batch-size = 5000 # will flush if this many points get buffered
  batch-pending = 10 # number of batches that may be pending in memory
  batch-timeout = "10s"
  read-buffer = 0 # UDP read buffer size, 0 means to use OS default
  typesdb = "/opt/collectd/share/collectd/types.db"
  security-level = "none" # "none", "sign", or "encrypt"

IF collectd is not installed on the system - download the types.db file as influx needs this

$ mkdir /opt/collectd && mkdir /opt/collectd/share && mkdir /opt/collectd/share/collectd && cd /opt/collectd/share/collectd && wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/collectd/collectd/master/src/types.db && cd -

Start InfluxDB

$ sudo service influxdb start

Create a collectd database

$ influx

At the prompt type

> CREATE DATABASE collectd
> exit

Configure Grafana repos and install it:

...

In the SELECT row you can specify what fields and functions you want to use. If you have a group by time you need an aggregation function. Some functions like derivative require an aggregation function. More info can be found here: http://docs.grafana.org/features/datasources/influxdb/#field-aggregation-functions

Recommendation here is to have the fill field in the the Group By row set to none.

To add more values --> add more queries. OR to add all the values for particular instances use the tag(instance) in the Group By row. For the Query above this results in the graph below: 

...

Without it the  tag(instance) in the Group By row the graph would only provide one value:

to modify the refresh rate and the graphing scale, click on the <clock-symbol "Last" time period> link on the top right of the menu bar. This will present various timing options. Select the time scale you want to use from the quick ranges or manually configure it and update the refresh rate in the "Refreshing every" option from off to a suitable value. If you don't want the graph to automatically refresh simple leave the "Refreshing every" option set to off

Image Added

References

http://docs.grafana.org/features/panels/graph/

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