Getting Started with Telegraf

What is Telegraf?

Telegraf is an open-source server agent for collecting and reporting metrics. It can be used to collect a variety of metrics such as system statistics, application metrics, and event logs from spacecraft, drones, etc. Telegraf is highly extensible, with a plugin-driven architecture that allows it to support a wide range of input and output formats.

Common Uses of Telegraf

Telegraf is commonly used for:

• System Monitoring: Collecting system-level metrics such as CPU usage, memory usage, disk I/O, and network statistics.
• Application Monitoring: Gathering metrics from various applications and services, including databases, web servers, and custom applications.
• Data Transformation: Applying transformations to the collected data before sending it to the desired output.
• Metric Reporting: Sending collected metrics to various backends such as Nominal

Sending Data to Nominal

1. Create a Nominal Data Source via the Python client.
2. Log in to Nominal and copy the Write RID for the connection that was just created.
3. Provision a Nominal API key by navigating to Org Settings in the Nominal platform.
4. Substitue your Write RID and API Key into the following example telegraf file and get started.

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# Global agent configuration
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[agent]
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  interval = "1s" # How often to gather metrics
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  round_interval = true
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  metric_batch_size = 1000
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  metric_buffer_limit = 10000
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  collection_jitter = "0s"
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  flush_interval = "1s"
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  flush_jitter = "0s"
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  precision = "1ns"
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  debug = false
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  quiet = false
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# Example input plugin for reading CPU stats
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[[inputs.cpu]]
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  ## Whether to report per-cpu stats or not
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  percpu = true
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  ## Whether to report total system cpu stats or not
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  totalcpu = true
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  ## If true, collect raw CPU time metrics
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  collect_cpu_time = false
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  ## If true, compute and report the sum of all non-idle CPU states
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  report_active = false
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  ## If true and the info is available then add core_id and physical_id tags
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  core_tags = false
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# http output for streaming to Nominal
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[[outputs.http]]
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  url = "https://api.gov.nominal.io/api/storage/writer/v1/telegraf/$DATASOURCE_RID"
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  data_format = "json"
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  content_encoding = "gzip"
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  json_timestamp_units = "1ns"
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  flush_interval = "3s"
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  [outputs.http.headers]
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    Content-Type = "application/json"
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    Authorization = "Bearer $YOUR_API_TOKEN"

Note: Telegraf also supports embedding secrets such as your API token via the secrets store function