Jess Ingrassellino, Engineering Manager
Data Acquisition & Telegraf
Get Your Data Into
InfluxDB

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 2
| Get Your Data Into InfluxDB: Agenda
Telegraf
Client Libraries
API
Command Line Tools
UI Data Loading
Flux from
Best Practices

Extensive Plugin Ecosystem
Telegraf

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 4

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 5
~ 300 plugins (input, output, processor, aggregator)
Single Binary
Extensible in any language with ExecD
Low and no-code options
Robust Agent: scheduling, streaming, metrics routing, more
| What’s so great about Telegraf?

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 6
Using Telegraf
Download telegraf binary for your operating system
Edit the configuration file to use the plugins of your choice (via UI or in the
text editor of your choice)
Run Telegraf

Getting data in using different languages
Client Libraries

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 8
Client Libraries
Arduino
C#
Go
Java
Kotlin
Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
Swift

Write API to /write endpoint
Direct API

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 10
https:/
/docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v2.0/write-data/developer-tools/api/
What’s required for a request?

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 11
https:/
/docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v2.0/write-data/developer-tools/api/
A sample request (uncompressed)

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 12
https:/
/docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v2.0/api/#operation/PostWrite
Expected Response Codes

CSV and Line Protocol
Command Line Tools

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 14
InfluxDB Write
https:/
/docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v2.0/reference/cli/influx/write/
Writes data to InfluxDB via stdin or from a specified file, files, url, or urls
Line Protocol, annotated CSV, or extended annotated CSV

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 15
InfluxDB Write: Examples
https:/
/docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v2.0/reference/cli/influx/write/

Test and Explore with Low and No-code options
UI Data Loading

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 17
Load Data with the UI
Login to your cloud account and select your client library, telegraf plugin, or template
Edit your configuration in the UI and get url for your cloud instance
Run your configuration and see your data flow!

Flux from

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 19
| Using Flux from
Flux from retrieves data from an InfluxDB data source
Returns a stream of tables from a specified bucket
Contains each unique series in its own table
Each record in the table is a single point in the series
https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v2.0/write-data/best-practices/optimize-writes/

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 20
| Flux from example usage
https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v2.0/write-data/best-practices/optimize-writes/

Data Input
Best Practices

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 22
| Optimize Writes
Batch Writes
Sort Tags By Key
Use the coarsest time precision possible
Use gzip compression
Synchronize hosts with NTP
Write multiple data points with one request
https:/
/docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v2.0/write-data/best-practices/optimize-writes/

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 23
| Handle Duplicate Data Points
Duplicate Data Points
Preserve Duplicate Data Points
Add arbitrary tag
Implement the timestamp
https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v2.0/write-data/best-practices/duplicate-points/

© 2021 InfluxData. All rights reserved. 24
| Schema Design Recommendations
Storing data
Store commonly-queried meta data in tags.
Store data in fields if each data point contains a different value.
Store numeric values as fields (tag values only support string values).
Use recommended naming conventions
avoid keywords in tag and field names
avoid the same tag and field name
avoid encoding data in measurement names
avoid more than one piece of information in one tag
Avoid too many series
https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v2.0/write-data/best-practices/schema-design/

Thank you!