Kafka and OpenObserve Integration
Powerful performance with an easy integration, powered by Telegraf, the open source data connector built by InfluxData.
This is not the recommended configuration for real-time query at scale. For query and compression optimization, high-speed ingest, and high availability, you may want to consider Kafka and InfluxDB.
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Powerful Performance, Limitless Scale
Collect, organize, and act on massive volumes of high-velocity data. Any data is more valuable when you think of it as time series data. with InfluxDB, the #1 time series platform built to scale with Telegraf.
See Ways to Get Started
Input and output integration overview
This plugin allows you to gather metrics from Kafka topics in real-time, enhancing data monitoring and collection capabilities within your Telegraf setup.
This configuration pairs Telegraf’s HTTP output with OpenObserve’s native JSON ingestion API, turning any Telegraf agent into a first-class OpenObserve collector.
Integration details
Kafka
The Kafka Telegraf plugin is designed to read data from Kafka topics and create metrics using supported input data formats. As a service input plugin, it listens continuously for incoming metrics and events, differing from standard input plugins that operate at fixed intervals. This particular plugin can utilize features from various Kafka versions and is capable of consuming messages from specified topics, applying configurations such as security credentials using SASL, and managing message processing with options for message offsets and consumer groups. The flexibility of this plugin allows it to handle a wide array of message formats and use cases, making it a valuable asset for applications relying on Kafka for data ingestion.
OpenObserve
OpenObserve is an open source observability platform written in Rust that stores data cost-effectively on object storage or local disk. It exposes REST endpoints such as /api/{org}/ingest/metrics/_json that accept batched metric documents conforming to a concise JSON schema, making it an attractive drop-in replacement for Loki or Elasticsearch stacks. The Telegraf HTTP output plugin streams metrics to arbitrary HTTP targets; when the "data_format = "json"" serializer is selected, Telegraf batches its metric objects into a payload that matches OpenObserve’s ingestion contract. The plugin supports configurable batch size, custom headers, TLS, and compression, allowing operators to authenticate with Basic or Bearer tokens and to enforce back-pressure without additional collectors. By reusing existing Telegraf agents already collecting system, application, or SNMP data, organizations can funnel rich telemetry into OpenObserve dashboards and SQL-like analytics with minimal overhead, enabling unified observability, long-term retention, and real-time alerting without vendor lock-in.
Configuration
Kafka
[[inputs.kafka_consumer]]
## Kafka brokers.
brokers = ["localhost:9092"]
## Set the minimal supported Kafka version. Should be a string contains
## 4 digits in case if it is 0 version and 3 digits for versions starting
## from 1.0.0 separated by dot. This setting enables the use of new
## Kafka features and APIs. Must be 0.10.2.0(used as default) or greater.
## Please, check the list of supported versions at
## https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/Shopify/sarama#SupportedVersions
## ex: kafka_version = "2.6.0"
## ex: kafka_version = "0.10.2.0"
# kafka_version = "0.10.2.0"
## Topics to consume.
topics = ["telegraf"]
## Topic regular expressions to consume. Matches will be added to topics.
## Example: topic_regexps = [ "*test", "metric[0-9A-z]*" ]
# topic_regexps = [ ]
## When set this tag will be added to all metrics with the topic as the value.
# topic_tag = ""
## The list of Kafka message headers that should be pass as metric tags
## works only for Kafka version 0.11+, on lower versions the message headers
## are not available
# msg_headers_as_tags = []
## The name of kafka message header which value should override the metric name.
## In case when the same header specified in current option and in msg_headers_as_tags
## option, it will be excluded from the msg_headers_as_tags list.
# msg_header_as_metric_name = ""
## Set metric(s) timestamp using the given source.
## Available options are:
## metric -- do not modify the metric timestamp
## inner -- use the inner message timestamp (Kafka v0.10+)
## outer -- use the outer (compressed) block timestamp (Kafka v0.10+)
# timestamp_source = "metric"
## Optional Client id
# client_id = "Telegraf"
## Optional TLS Config
# enable_tls = false
# tls_ca = "/etc/telegraf/ca.pem"
# tls_cert = "/etc/telegraf/cert.pem"
# tls_key = "/etc/telegraf/key.pem"
## Use TLS but skip chain & host verification
# insecure_skip_verify = false
## Period between keep alive probes.
## Defaults to the OS configuration if not specified or zero.
# keep_alive_period = "15s"
## SASL authentication credentials. These settings should typically be used
## with TLS encryption enabled
# sasl_username = "kafka"
# sasl_password = "secret"
## Optional SASL:
## one of: OAUTHBEARER, PLAIN, SCRAM-SHA-256, SCRAM-SHA-512, GSSAPI
## (defaults to PLAIN)
# sasl_mechanism = ""
## used if sasl_mechanism is GSSAPI
# sasl_gssapi_service_name = ""
# ## One of: KRB5_USER_AUTH and KRB5_KEYTAB_AUTH
# sasl_gssapi_auth_type = "KRB5_USER_AUTH"
# sasl_gssapi_kerberos_config_path = "/"
# sasl_gssapi_realm = "realm"
# sasl_gssapi_key_tab_path = ""
# sasl_gssapi_disable_pafxfast = false
## used if sasl_mechanism is OAUTHBEARER
# sasl_access_token = ""
## SASL protocol version. When connecting to Azure EventHub set to 0.
# sasl_version = 1
# Disable Kafka metadata full fetch
# metadata_full = false
## Name of the consumer group.
# consumer_group = "telegraf_metrics_consumers"
## Compression codec represents the various compression codecs recognized by
## Kafka in messages.
## 0 : None
## 1 : Gzip
## 2 : Snappy
## 3 : LZ4
## 4 : ZSTD
# compression_codec = 0
## Initial offset position; one of "oldest" or "newest".
# offset = "oldest"
## Consumer group partition assignment strategy; one of "range", "roundrobin" or "sticky".
# balance_strategy = "range"
## Maximum number of retries for metadata operations including
## connecting. Sets Sarama library's Metadata.Retry.Max config value. If 0 or
## unset, use the Sarama default of 3,
# metadata_retry_max = 0
## Type of retry backoff. Valid options: "constant", "exponential"
# metadata_retry_type = "constant"
## Amount of time to wait before retrying. When metadata_retry_type is
## "constant", each retry is delayed this amount. When "exponential", the
## first retry is delayed this amount, and subsequent delays are doubled. If 0
## or unset, use the Sarama default of 250 ms
# metadata_retry_backoff = 0
## Maximum amount of time to wait before retrying when metadata_retry_type is
## "exponential". Ignored for other retry types. If 0, there is no backoff
## limit.
# metadata_retry_max_duration = 0
## When set to true, this turns each bootstrap broker address into a set of
## IPs, then does a reverse lookup on each one to get its canonical hostname.
## This list of hostnames then replaces the original address list.
## resolve_canonical_bootstrap_servers_only = false
## Strategy for making connection to kafka brokers. Valid options: "startup",
## "defer". If set to "defer" the plugin is allowed to start before making a
## connection. This is useful if the broker may be down when telegraf is
## started, but if there are any typos in the broker setting, they will cause
## connection failures without warning at startup
# connection_strategy = "startup"
## Maximum length of a message to consume, in bytes (default 0/unlimited);
## larger messages are dropped
max_message_len = 1000000
## Max undelivered messages
## This plugin uses tracking metrics, which ensure messages are read to
## outputs before acknowledging them to the original broker to ensure data
## is not lost. This option sets the maximum messages to read from the
## broker that have not been written by an output.
##
## This value needs to be picked with awareness of the agent's
## metric_batch_size value as well. Setting max undelivered messages too high
## can result in a constant stream of data batches to the output. While
## setting it too low may never flush the broker's messages.
# max_undelivered_messages = 1000
## Maximum amount of time the consumer should take to process messages. If
## the debug log prints messages from sarama about 'abandoning subscription
## to [topic] because consuming was taking too long', increase this value to
## longer than the time taken by the output plugin(s).
##
## Note that the effective timeout could be between 'max_processing_time' and
## '2 * max_processing_time'.
# max_processing_time = "100ms"
## The default number of message bytes to fetch from the broker in each
## request (default 1MB). This should be larger than the majority of
## your messages, or else the consumer will spend a lot of time
## negotiating sizes and not actually consuming. Similar to the JVM's
## `fetch.message.max.bytes`.
# consumer_fetch_default = "1MB"
## Data format to consume.
## Each data format has its own unique set of configuration options, read
## more about them here:
## https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/blob/master/docs/DATA_FORMATS_INPUT.md
data_format = "influx"
OpenObserve
[[outputs.http]]
## OpenObserve JSON metrics ingestion endpoint
url = "https://api.openobserve.ai/api/default/ingest/metrics/_json"
## Use POST to push batches
method = "POST"
## Basic auth header (base64 encoded "username:password")
headers = { Authorization = "Basic dXNlcjpwYXNzd29yZA==" }
## Timeout for HTTP requests
timeout = "10s"
## Override Content-Type to match OpenObserve expectation
content_type = "application/json"
## Force Telegraf to batch and serialize metrics as JSON
data_format = "json"
## JSON serializer specific options
json_timestamp_units = "1ms"
## Uncomment to restrict batch size
# batch_size = 5000
Input and output integration examples
Kafka
-
Real-Time Data Processing: Use the Kafka plugin to feed live data from a Kafka topic into a monitoring system. This can be particularly useful for applications that require instant feedback on performance metrics or user activity, allowing businesses to react more swiftly to changing conditions in their environments.
-
Dynamic Metrics Collection: Leverage this plugin to dynamically adjust the metrics being captured based on events occurring within Kafka. For instance, by integrating with other services, users can have the plugin reconfigure itself on-the-fly, ensuring relevant metrics are always collected according to the needs of the business or application.
-
Centralized Logging and Monitoring: Implement a centralized logging system using the Kafka Consumer Plugin to aggregate logs from multiple services into a unified monitoring dashboard. This setup can help identify issues across different services and improve overall system observability and troubleshooting capabilities.
-
Anomaly Detection System: Combine Kafka with machine learning algorithms for real-time anomaly detection. By constantly analyzing streaming data, this setup can automatically identify unusual patterns, triggering alerts and mitigating potential issues more effectively.
OpenObserve
-
Edge Device Health Mirror: Deploy Telegraf on thousands of industrial IoT devices to capture temperature, vibration, and power metrics, then use this output to push JSON batches to OpenObserve. Plant operators gain a real-time overview of machine health and can trigger maintenance based on anomalies without relying on heavyweight collectors.
-
Blue-Green Deployment Canary: Attach a lightweight Telegraf sidecar to each Kubernetes release-candidate pod that scrapes /metrics and forwards container stats to a dedicated “canary” stream in OpenObserve. Continuous comparison of error rates between blue and green versions empowers the CI pipeline to auto-roll back poor performers within seconds.
-
Multi-Tenant SaaS Billing Pipeline: Emit per-customer usage counters via Telegraf and tag them with
tenant_id; the HTTP plugin posts them to OpenObserve where SQL reports aggregate usage into invoices, eliminating separate metering services and simplifying compliance audits. -
Security Threat Scoring: Fuse Suricata events and host resource metrics in Telegraf, deliver them to OpenObserve’s analytics engine, and run stream-processing rules that correlate spikes in suspicious traffic with CPU saturation to produce an actionable threat score and automatically open tickets in a SOAR platform.
Feedback
Thank you for being part of our community! If you have any general feedback or found any bugs on these pages, we welcome and encourage your input. Please submit your feedback in the InfluxDB community Slack.
Powerful Performance, Limitless Scale
Collect, organize, and act on massive volumes of high-velocity data. Any data is more valuable when you think of it as time series data. with InfluxDB, the #1 time series platform built to scale with Telegraf.
See Ways to Get Started
Related Integrations
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