Table of Contents
Recording Stats at VHS
VHS has an InfluxDB/Grafana instance to record and graph datapoints in the cloud.
InfluxDB
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
A Dataset Example
{
"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
]
]
}
]
}
]
}
A sample exploration
Login to the InfluxDB interface (linked below)
Select the “api” database in top right
SHOW SERIES
SHOW MEASUREMENTS
SHOW TAG KEYS FROM “api”
SHOW TAG VALUES FROM “api” WITH KEY = “name”
Grafana
Grafana takes those datapoints and makes pretty graphs out of them.
Links
- 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