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

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>

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

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

...

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:

...