Fluo metrics in Grafana/InfluxDB

This document describes how to send Fluo metrics to InfluxDB, a time series database, and make them viewable in Grafana, a visualization tool. If you want general information on metrics, see the Fluo metrics documentation.

Set up Grafana/InfluxDB on your own

Follow the instructions below to setup InfluxDB and Grafana.

Follow the standard installation instructions for InfluxDB and Grafana. As for versions, the instructions below were written using InfluxDB v0.9.4.2 and Grafana v2.5.0.

Add the following to your InfluxDB configuration to configure it accept metrics in Graphite format from Fluo. The configuration below contains templates that transform the Graphite metrics into a format that is usable in InfluxDB.

[[graphite]]
  bind-address = ":2003"
  enabled = true
  database = "fluo_metrics"
  protocol = "tcp"
  consistency-level = "one"
  separator = "_"
  batch-size = 1000
  batch-pending = 5
  batch-timeout = "1s"
  templates = [
    "fluo.class.*.*.*.*.* ..app.host.measurement.observer.field",
    "fluo.class.*.*.*.* ..app.host.measurement.observer",
    "fluo.system.*.*.*.* ..app.host.measurement.field",
    "fluo.system.*.*.* ..app.host.measurement",
    "fluo.app.*.*.* ..host.measurement.field",
    "fluo.app.*.* ..host.measurement",
  ]

Fluo distributes a file called fluo_metrics_setup.txt that contains a list of commands that setup InfluxDB. These commands will configure an InfluxDB user, retention policies, and continuous queries that downsample data for the historical dashboard in Grafana. Run the command below to execute the commands in this file:
```
 $INFLUXDB_HOME/bin/influx -import -path $FLUO_HOME/contrib/influxdb/fluo_metrics_setup.txt
```
Configure fluo.properties in your Fluo app configuration to send Graphite metrics to InfluxDB. Below is example configuration. Remember to replace <INFLUXDB_HOST> with the actual host.
```
 fluo.metrics.reporter.graphite.enable=true
 fluo.metrics.reporter.graphite.host=<INFLUXDB_HOST>
 fluo.metrics.reporter.graphite.port=2003
 fluo.metrics.reporter.graphite.frequency=30
```
The reporting frequency of 30 sec is required if you are using the provided Grafana dashboards that are configured in the next step.
Grafana needs to be configured to load dashboard JSON templates from a directory. Fluo distributes two Grafana dashboard templates in its tarball distribution in the directory contrib/grafana. Before restarting Grafana, you should copy the templates from your Fluo installation to the dashboards/ directory configured below.
```
[dashboards.json]
enabled = true
path = <GRAFANA_HOME>/dashboards
```
If you restart Grafana, you will see the Fluo dashboards configured but all of their charts will be empty unless you have a Fluo application running and configured to send data to InfluxDB. When you start sending data, you may need to refresh the dashboard page in the browser to start viewing metrics.