Recording Stats at VHS

VHS has an InfluxDB/Grafana instance to record and graph datapoints in the cloud.

InfluxDB is a time-series database. What that means, is that it stores data with respect to time.

Consider a MySQL database. Except instead of sending a new value and overwriting the previous data, InfluxDB keeps track of both, along with the time they were sent (unless you specify a different time).

You can also specify “retention policies” that phase out old datapoints, basic arithmetic and soon, some native analytics.

Some use-cases are current temperature, price of Bitcoin, or common “open” times for isvhsopen.com

<WRAP center round box 60%>

{

  "results": [
      {
          "series": [
              {
                  "name": "cpu_load_short",
                  "columns": [
                      "time",
                      "value"
                  ],
                  "values": [
                      [
                          "2015-01-29T21:55:43.702900257Z",
                          0.55
                      ],
                      [
                          "2015-01-29T21:55:43.702900257Z",
                          23422
                      ],
                      [
                          "2015-06-11T20:46:02Z",
                          0.64
                      ]
                  ]
              }
          ]
      }
  ]

}

</WRAP>

Login to the InfluxDB interface (linked below)

Select the “api” database in top right

<WRAP center round box 60%> SHOW SERIES

SHOW MEASUREMENTS

SHOW TAG KEYS FROM “api”

SHOW TAG VALUES FROM “api” WITH KEY = “name” </WRAP>

Grafana takes those datapoints and makes pretty graphs out of them.

• InfluxDB: http://stats.vanhack.ca:8083/ - Use “admin” and standard VHS credentials
• Grafana: http://stats.vanhack.ca:3000/ - Create your own account!
• Get your head around it: https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v0.9/concepts/key_concepts/
• Get your hands dirty: https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v0.9/guides/querying_data/
• Operation scripts for installation details: https://github.com/vhs/vhs-ops-scripts