1. How to deliver customer-facing
metrics with InfluxDB

2. Cullen Murphy - Site Reliability Engineer - Particle
● Originally started in Embedded Systems
● Automated billing systems with Ruby on Rails
● Previously a Contracting WebDev and SysAdmin
● At Particle for 2 years

3. What is Particle?

5. WE HAVE GROWN THE WORLD’S LARGEST IOT DEVELOPER COMMUNITY
170,000

6. WE FOCUS ON SOLVING REAL PROBLEMS FOR REAL CUSTOMERS

7. & Particle
Internal Monitoring
● Kubernetes DaemonSet
● StatsD DataDog tagging
● Application Specific Metrics
Fleet Health Metrics
● Telegraf Sidecar
● Prometheus Client
● Device Specific Metrics

8. WHY BUILD IT
HOW WE BUILT IT
HARD PROBLEMS

9. WHY BUILD IT
HOW WE BUILT IT
HARD PROBLEMS

10. InfluxDB provides deep insight
Why can’t our customers
have this?

11. Cloud Computing vs IoT
● Has some CPUs
● Has a bunch of RAM
● Runs some software
● Connected over a network
● Has limited resources
● Usually 10s or 100s in a deployment
Cloud Computer IoT “thing”
● Has a CPU
● Has some RAM
● Runs some software
● Connected over a network
● Has limited resources
● Usually 1,000s or 100,000s in a
deployment

13. NO METRICS POSTERS
Metrics without actionable data are useless

14. So what did we build?

15. THINK ABOUT DATA SECURITY
Don’t store sensitive data
THINK ABOUT DATA SECURITY
Don’t store sensitive data

16. Architecture

17. HOW WE BUILT IT
WHY BUILD IT
HARD PROBLEMS

18. EASY COLLECTION
From a development standpoint
but might make storage hard
Continuous Queries (or Scheduled Tasks) can help

19. EASY COLLECTION with a NPM Module
Setup
Use

20. EASY COLLECTION with a NPM Module
Setup
Use

21. COMPLEXITY IN STORAGE QUERIES
Continuous Queries work but...
● InfluxQL is a bit limiting
● InfluxData’s Support has been fantastic

22. COMPLEXITY IN STORAGE QUERIES
Continuous Queries work but...
● InfluxQL is a bit limiting
● InfluxData’s Support has been fantastic
● Flux is far more concise for our use case

23. WHY BUILD IT
HOW TO BUILD IT
HARD PROBLEMS

24. LYING METRICS
Are worse than no metrics
If you can’t say something nice true, don’t say anything at all

25. Collect only what you need

26. PROVIDE GUARD RAILS
Providing data access is powerful, but keep a tight ship

27. PROVIDE GUARD RAILS
Providing data access is powerful, but keep a tight ship
PROVIDE GUARD RAILS
Providing data access is powerful, but keep a tight ship

28. THINK ABOUT ACCESS
Ensure your customers can only access their data

29. THINK ABOUT DATA SECURITY
Don’t store sensitive data

30. WHY BUILD IT
HOW WE BUILT IT
HARD PROBLEMS

31. THINK ABOUT DATA SECURITY
Don’t store sensitive data
THINK ABOUT DATA SECURITY
Don’t store sensitive data

32. QUESTIONS?

33. We’re Hiring! particle.io/jobs

34. Architecture