StatsD and Librato Integration

Input and output integration overview

The StatsD input plugin captures metrics from a StatsD server by running a listener service in the background, allowing for comprehensive performance monitoring and metric aggregation.

The Librato plugin for Telegraf is designed to facilitate seamless integration with the Librato Metrics API, allowing for efficient metric reporting and monitoring.

Integration details

StatsD

The StatsD input plugin is designed to gather metrics from a StatsD server by running a backgrounded StatsD listener service while Telegraf is active. This plugin leverages the format of the StatsD messages as established by the original Etsy implementation, which allows for various types of metrics including gauges, counters, sets, timings, histograms, and distributions. The capabilities of the StatsD plugin extend to parsing tags and extending the standard protocol with features that accommodate InfluxDB’s tagging system. It can handle messages sent via different protocols (UDP or TCP), manage multiple metric metrics effectively, and offers advanced configurations for optimal metric handling such as percentiles calculation and data transformation templates. This flexibility empowers users to track application performance comprehensively, making it an essential tool for robust monitoring setups.

Librato

The Librato plugin enables Telegraf to send metrics to the Librato Metrics API. To authenticate, users must provide an api_user and api_token, which can be acquired from the Librato account settings. This integration allows for efficient monitoring and reporting of custom metrics within the Librato platform. The plugin also utilizes a source_tag option that can enrich the metrics with contextual information from Point Tags; however, it does not currently support sending associated Point Tags. It is essential to note that any point value sent that cannot be converted to a float64 type will be skipped, ensuring that only valid metrics are processed and sent to Librato. The plugin also supports secret-store options for managing sensitive authentication credentials securely, facilitating best practices in credential management.

Configuration

StatsD

[[inputs.statsd]]
  ## Protocol, must be "tcp", "udp4", "udp6" or "udp" (default=udp)
  protocol = "udp"

  ## MaxTCPConnection - applicable when protocol is set to tcp (default=250)
  max_tcp_connections = 250

  ## Enable TCP keep alive probes (default=false)
  tcp_keep_alive = false

  ## Specifies the keep-alive period for an active network connection.
  ## Only applies to TCP sockets and will be ignored if tcp_keep_alive is false.
  ## Defaults to the OS configuration.
  # tcp_keep_alive_period = "2h"

  ## Address and port to host UDP listener on
  service_address = ":8125"

  ## The following configuration options control when telegraf clears it's cache
  ## of previous values. If set to false, then telegraf will only clear it's
  ## cache when the daemon is restarted.
  ## Reset gauges every interval (default=true)
  delete_gauges = true
  ## Reset counters every interval (default=true)
  delete_counters = true
  ## Reset sets every interval (default=true)
  delete_sets = true
  ## Reset timings & histograms every interval (default=true)
  delete_timings = true

  ## Enable aggregation temporality adds temporality=delta or temporality=commulative tag, and
  ## start_time field, which adds the start time of the metric accumulation.
  ## You should use this when using OpenTelemetry output.
  # enable_aggregation_temporality = false

  ## Percentiles to calculate for timing & histogram stats.
  percentiles = [50.0, 90.0, 99.0, 99.9, 99.95, 100.0]

  ## separator to use between elements of a statsd metric
  metric_separator = "_"

  ## Parses tags in the datadog statsd format
  ## http://docs.datadoghq.com/guides/dogstatsd/
  ## deprecated in 1.10; use datadog_extensions option instead
  parse_data_dog_tags = false

  ## Parses extensions to statsd in the datadog statsd format
  ## currently supports metrics and datadog tags.
  ## http://docs.datadoghq.com/guides/dogstatsd/
  datadog_extensions = false

  ## Parses distributions metric as specified in the datadog statsd format
  ## https://docs.datadoghq.com/developers/metrics/types/?tab=distribution#definition
  datadog_distributions = false

  ## Keep or drop the container id as tag. Included as optional field
  ## in DogStatsD protocol v1.2 if source is running in Kubernetes
  ## https://docs.datadoghq.com/developers/dogstatsd/datagram_shell/?tab=metrics#dogstatsd-protocol-v12
  datadog_keep_container_tag = false

  ## Statsd data translation templates, more info can be read here:
  ## https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/blob/master/docs/TEMPLATE_PATTERN.md
  # templates = [
  #     "cpu.* measurement*"
  # ]

  ## Number of UDP messages allowed to queue up, once filled,
  ## the statsd server will start dropping packets
  allowed_pending_messages = 10000

  ## Number of worker threads used to parse the incoming messages.
  # number_workers_threads = 5

  ## Number of timing/histogram values to track per-measurement in the
  ## calculation of percentiles. Raising this limit increases the accuracy
  ## of percentiles but also increases the memory usage and cpu time.
  percentile_limit = 1000

  ## Maximum socket buffer size in bytes, once the buffer fills up, metrics
  ## will start dropping.  Defaults to the OS default.
  # read_buffer_size = 65535

  ## Max duration (TTL) for each metric to stay cached/reported without being updated.
  # max_ttl = "10h"

  ## Sanitize name method
  ## By default, telegraf will pass names directly as they are received.
  ## However, upstream statsd now does sanitization of names which can be
  ## enabled by using the "upstream" method option. This option will a) replace
  ## white space with '_', replace '/' with '-', and remove characters not
  ## matching 'a-zA-Z_\-0-9\.;='.
  #sanitize_name_method = ""

  ## Replace dots (.) with underscore (_) and dashes (-) with
  ## double underscore (__) in metric names.
  # convert_names = false

  ## Convert all numeric counters to float
  ## Enabling this would ensure that both counters and guages are both emitted
  ## as floats.
  # float_counters = false

Librato

[[outputs.librato]]
  ## Librato API Docs
  ## http://dev.librato.com/v1/metrics-authentication
  ## Librato API user
  api_user = "[email protected]" # required.
  ## Librato API token
  api_token = "my-secret-token" # required.
  ## Debug
  # debug = false
  ## Connection timeout.
  # timeout = "5s"
  ## Output source Template (same as graphite buckets)
  ## see https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/blob/master/docs/DATA_FORMATS_OUTPUT.md#graphite
  ## This template is used in librato's source (not metric's name)
  template = "host"

Input and output integration examples

StatsD

1. Real-time Application Performance Monitoring: Utilize the StatsD input plugin to monitor application performance metrics in real-time. By configuring your application to send various metrics to a StatsD server, teams can leverage this plugin to analyze performance bottlenecks, track user activity, and ensure resource optimization dynamically. The combination of historical and real-time metrics allows for proactive troubleshooting and enhances the responsiveness of issue resolution processes.

2. Tracking User Engagement Metrics in Web Applications: Use the StatsD plugin to gather user engagement statistics, such as page views, click events, and interaction times. By sending these metrics to the StatsD server, businesses can derive valuable insights into user behavior, enabling them to make data-driven decisions to improve user experience and interface design based on quantitative feedback. This can significantly enhance the effectiveness of marketing strategies and product development efforts.

3. Infrastructure Health Monitoring: Deploy the StatsD plugin to monitor the health of your server infrastructure by tracking metrics such as resource utilization, server response times, and network performance. With this setup, DevOps teams can gain detailed visibility into system performance, effectively anticipating issues before they escalate. This enables a proactive approach to infrastructure management, minimizing downtimes and ensuring optimal service delivery.

4. Creating Comprehensive Service Dashboards: Integrate StatsD with visualization tools to create comprehensive dashboards that reflect the status and health of services across an architecture. For instance, combining data from multiple services logged through StatsD can transform raw metrics into actionable insights, showcasing system performance trends over time. This capability empowers stakeholders to maintain oversight and drive decisions based on visualized data sets, enhancing overall operational transparency.

Librato

1. Real-time Application Monitoring: Utilize Librato to collect performance metrics from a web application in real-time. This setup involves sending response times, error rates, and user interactions to Librato, allowing developers to monitor the application’s health and performance metrics closely. By analyzing these metrics, teams can quickly identify and address performance bottlenecks or application failures before they impact end users.

2. Infrastructure Metrics Aggregation: Leverage this plugin to gather and send metrics from various infrastructure components, such as servers or containers, to Librato for centralized monitoring. Configuring the plugin to send CPU, memory usage, and disk I/O metrics enables system administrators to have a comprehensive view of infrastructure performance, assisting in capacity planning and resource optimization strategies.

3. Custom Metrics for Business Operations: Feed business-specific metrics, such as sales transactions or user sign-ups, to the Librato service using this plugin. By tracking these custom metrics, businesses can gain insights into their operational performance and make data-driven decisions to enhance their strategies, marketing efforts, or product development initiatives.

4. Anomaly Detection in Metrics: Implement monitoring tools that utilize machine learning for anomaly detection. By continuously sending real-time metrics to Librato, teams can analyze trends and automatically flag unusual behavior, such as sudden spikes in latency or unusual traffic patterns, enabling timely intervention and troubleshooting.

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.