What is more exciting than staring at graphs? Nothing right. If you just love some system metrics or want to display the temperature in your home over time, a time series database like InfluxDB combined with Grafana is the way to go!
This guide will show you an easy way to get both of these systems up in no time with the help of Traefik and Docker. If you already have a server with Traefik running then continue. Otherwise I recommend you read my previous post and you'll be back here soon.
Setup
Let's make a directory for your data to live in, as sudo if needed
sudo su
mkdir /opt/influx
Then we need an internal docker network for the services to communicate on
docker network create influx
docker-compose.yml
We'll put our services in a docker-compose file to be able to easily manage things. We'll put the basics in first.
nano /opt/influx/docker-compose.yml
version: "2"
services:
influxdb:
# We'll add stuff here
grafana:
# and here
networks:
default:
external:
name: influx # The network we created
web:
external: true # For traefik
InfluxDB
There are a number of environment variables available for the image of which we'll use a few.
If you want to send data to Influx from the outside world you need to have a frontend in Traefik with the port and hostname, if not then remove the labels section. You can also remove - web under networks.
We also need a user with write access and a database to write to. For some nice system metrics I use telegraf so here we'll have the InfluxDB image create that database and user initially. If you want to use something else as input just change the values accordingly.
influxdb:
image: influxdb:1.5.4-alpine
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
- "127.0.0.1:8086:8086"
volumes:
- ./influxdb:/var/lib/influxdb
environment:
- INFLUXDB_DB=telegraf
- INFLUXDB_USER=telegraf
- INFLUXDB_USER_PASSWORD=secretpassword
labels:
- "traefik.enable=true"
- "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:influxdb.example.com"
- "traefik.port=8086"
- "traefik.docker.network=web"
networks:
- web
- default # The external "influx" network
☝️ Remember to replace example.com in traefik.frontend.rule.
Grafana
Now let's add the Grafana service so that we have something to display our future stats with. First let's add a volume for persistent storage.
docker volume create grafana-storage
Then add this to docker-compose.yml between influxdb and networks.
grafana:
image: grafana/grafana:4.4.1
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
- "127.0.0.1:3000:3000"
volumes:
- grafana-storage:/var/lib/grafana
- ./log/grafana:/var/log/grafana
environment:
- GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD=supersecret
# Comment out if you have users that should sign up
- GF_USERS_ALLOW_SIGN_UP=false
- GF_SERVER_ROOT_URL=https://grafana.example.com
labels:
- "traefik.enable=true"
- "traefik.frontend.rule=Host:grafana.example.com"
- "traefik.port=3000"
- "traefik.docker.network=web"
networks:
- web
- default
volumes:
grafana-storage:
external: true
☝️ Remember to replace grafana.example.com in the 2 places above.
Grafana UI
Now you should be able to run the services!
# To start
docker-compose up -d
# Check logs
docker-compose logs
# Check processes
docker-compose ps
If everything looks alright, open up your Grafana URL and you should be greeted with a login screen. Use admin and the password you set as GF_SECURITY_ADMIN_PASSWORD. After logging in click "Add data source" and fill out the fields like this.
The hostname influx_influxdb_1 in the Url setting is from the docker network influx, since the services are in separate containers you can't use localhost here.
If you're getting error messages when saving/testing the data source and using Safari , try another browser.
Getting some data in there
If you already have a way to send data to Influx, then you're done! If not then previously mentioned telegraf is just as easy to set up.
mkdir /opt/telegraf
cd /opt/telegraf
nano docker-compose.yml
version: "2"
services:
telegraf:
image: telegraf:1.5.2
restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
- ./telegraf.conf:/etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf:ro
# For docker stats
- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
labels:
- "traefik.enable=false"
networks:
- default
networks:
default:
external:
name: influx
nano telegraf.conf
Here's a very simple conf just to get up and running. Feel free to use the default one for more options.
# Configuration for telegraf agent
[agent]
interval = "10s"
round_interval = true
metric_batch_size = 1000
metric_buffer_limit = 10000
collection_jitter = "0s"
flush_interval = "10s"
flush_jitter = "0s"
precision = ""
debug = false
quiet = false
logfile = ""
hostname = "MYHOST"
###############################################################################
# OUTPUT PLUGINS #
###############################################################################
# Configuration for influxdb server to send metrics to
[[outputs.influxdb]]
urls = ["http://influxdb:8086"] # required
database = "telegraf" # required
username = "telegraf"
password = "secretpassword"
retention_policy = ""
write_consistency = "any"
timeout = "5s"
###############################################################################
# INPUT PLUGINS #
###############################################################################
# Read metrics about cpu usage
[[inputs.cpu]]
## Whether to report per-cpu stats or not
percpu = true
## Whether to report total system cpu stats or not
totalcpu = true
## If true, collect raw CPU time metrics.
collect_cpu_time = false
# Read metrics about disk usage by mount point
[[inputs.disk]]
## Ignore some mountpoints by filesystem type. For example (dev)tmpfs (usually
## present on /run, /var/run, /dev/shm or /dev).
ignore_fs = ["tmpfs", "devtmpfs"]
# Read metrics about disk IO by device
[[inputs.diskio]]
## Setting devices will restrict the stats to the specified devices.
# devices = ["sda", "sdb"]
# Get kernel statistics from /proc/stat
[[inputs.kernel]]
# no configuration
# Read metrics about memory usage
[[inputs.mem]]
# no configuration
# Get the number of processes and group them by status
[[inputs.processes]]
# no configuration
# Read metrics about swap memory usage
[[inputs.swap]]
# no configuration
# Read metrics about system load & uptime
[[inputs.system]]
# no configuration
# # Read metrics about docker containers
[[inputs.docker]]
endpoint = "unix:///var/run/docker.sock"
timeout = "5s"
# # Read metrics about network interface usage
[[inputs.net]]
interfaces = ["eth*"]
Start the service and you'll have some data coming in.
docker-compose up -d
docker-compose logs
Now go back to your Grafana instance and create some dashboards!
☝️ Telegraf sysstats by broferek
The End
If you noticed any factual errors, spelling mistakes (yes), best practises I'm not aware of or run into any trouble please comment below or hit me up on Twitter 🙌
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