Graphing Data and Metrics with Influx and Grafana

If you wish to deploy Grafana for alternative graphs, follow the steps below.

Grafana is an analytics platform that can provide alternative graphs for ultrafeeder.

In this guide we will be using InfluxDB as the data repository.

Using Grafana and InfluxDB in this configuration does not require a plan, account, or credentials for their respective cloud offerings.

Create docker volumes

Open the docker-compose.yml file that was created when deploying ultrafeeder.

Add the following lines to the volumes: section at the top of the file (below the version: section, and before the services: section):

influxdb_data:
influxdb_config:
grafana_data:

This creates the volumes that will contain influxdb and grafana’s application data.

Deploying influxdb and grafana containers

Open the .env file that was created when deploying ultrafeeder.

Append the following lines to the end of the file; avoid using surrounding "" for the variables, which can be set to any value you like and token should be thought of as a very strong password:

INFLUXDB_USER=<your influxdb username>
INFLUXDB_PASSWORD=<your influxdb password>
INFLUXDB_ADMIN_TOKEN=<your influxdb token>

Open the docker-compose.yml file that was created when deploying ultrafeeder.

Add the following lines to the environment section of the ultrafeeder container definition (in the ultrafeeder: section, below environment: and before the volumes: section):

- INFLUXDBV2_URL=http://influxdb:8086
- INFLUXDBV2_BUCKET=ultrafeeder
- INFLUXDBV2_ORG=ultrafeeder
- INFLUXDBV2_TOKEN=${INFLUXDB_ADMIN_TOKEN}

Append the following lines to the end of the file:

influxdb:
  image: influxdb:latest
  container_name: influxdb
  hostname: influxdb
  restart: unless-stopped
  environment:
    - DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_MODE=setup
    - DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_BUCKET=ultrafeeder
    - DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_ORG=ultrafeeder
    - DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_RETENTION=52w
    - DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_USERNAME=${INFLUXDB_USER}
    - DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_PASSWORD=${INFLUXDB_PASSWORD}
    - DOCKER_INFLUXDB_INIT_ADMIN_TOKEN=${INFLUXDB_ADMIN_TOKEN}
  ports:
    - 8086:8086
  volumes:
    - influxdb_data:/var/lib/influxdb2
    - influxdb_config:/etc/influxdb2

grafana:
  image: grafana/grafana-oss:latest
  container_name: grafana
  hostname: grafana
  restart: unless-stopped
  ports:
    - 3000:3000
  volumes:
    - grafana_data:/var/lib/grafana

Once the file has been updated, issue the command docker compose up -d in the application directory to apply the changes and bring up the influxdb and grafana containers. This will also restart the ultrafeeder container, which will now use telegraf to feed data to influxdb.

You should also be able to point your web browser at:

• http://docker.host.ip.addr:8086/ to access the influxdb console, use the credentials from your .env file.

• http://docker.host.ip.addr:3000/ to access the grafana console, use admin/admin as initial credentials, you should be prompted to change the password on first login.

Remember to change docker.host.ip.addr to the IP address of your docker host.

Configuring data source and dashboard in Grafana

After you have logged into the grafana console the following manual steps are required to connect to influxdb as the data source

1. Click Add your first data source in the main panel

2. Click InfluxDB from the list of options provided

3. Input or select the following options, if the option is not listed, do not input anything for that option (for Value the word Token must be included in the input:

Option	Input
Name	ultrafeeder
Query Language	InfluxQL
URL	http://influxdb:8086
Custom HTTP Headers	Click + Add header
Header	Authorization
Value	Token <your influxdb token>
Database	ultrafeeder
User	<your influxdb username>
Password	<your influxdb password>
HTTP Method	GET

Clicking Save & Test should return a green message indicating success. The dashboard can now be imported with the following steps

1. Hover over the four squares icon in the sidebar, click + Import

2. Enter 13168 into the Import via grafana.com section and click Load

3. Select ultrafeeder from the bottom drop down list

4. Click Import on the subsequent dialogue box

At this point you should see a very nice dashboard that was created by Mike (Thanks!). The final step is to add the radar plugin required by this dashboard:

1. Hover over the cog icon in the lower area of the sidebar, click Plugins

2. Enter radar into the Search Grafana plugins box, at this point Radar Graph should appear below

3. Click on Radar Graph in the main section

4. Click Install

Full functionality of the dashboard is now available, you can find it under General in the Dashboards section.