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Install Telegraf

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Learn out to install Telegraf.

This topic has instructions for installing Telegraf to work with Sumo Logic. We provide two sets of instructions:

  • Install Telegraf in a non-Kubernetes environment
  • Install Telegraf in a Kubenetes environment

Install Telegraf in a non-Kubernetes environment

This section has instructions for running Telegraf in a non-Kubernetes environment. 

Prerequisites 

This section describes prerequisites for installing Telgraf.

Privileges

Installing Telegraf typically requires root or administrator privileges. However, if you are using a pre-built binary, this is not the case. 

Networking

Telegraf input plugins may require custom ports. You configure port mappings in telegraf.conf, which, in default Linux installations, is located in /etc/telegraf. In a Windows installation, the configuration file is in the directory where you unzipped the Telegraf archive, C:\InfluxData\telegraf by default.

NTP

Telegraf uses a host’s local time in UTC to assign timestamps to data. Use the Network Time Protocol (NTP) to synchronize time between hosts; if hosts’ clocks aren’t synchronized with NTP, the timestamps on the data can be inaccurate.

Get Telegraf

You need a minimum of 1.16 version of Telegraf. Download a >=1.16 release of Telegraf. 

Install Telegraf on Ubuntu or Debian with apt-get

This section has instructions for installing the latest stable version of Telegraf on Ubuntu or Debian using the apt-get package manager. 

  1. Add the InfluxData repository.
    • To add the repository on Ubuntu, run the following command in a terminal window.

      wget -qO- https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdb.key | sudo apt-key add -
      source /etc/lsb-release
      echo "deb https://repos.influxdata.com/${DISTRIB_ID,,} ${DISTRIB_CODENAME} stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdb.list
       
    • To add the repository on Debian, run the following commands in a terminal window, skipping the comment lines, which begin with #.

      # Before adding Influx repository, run this so that apt will be able to read the repository.

      sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https

      # Add the InfluxData key

      wget -qO- https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdb.key | sudo apt-key add -
      source /etc/os-release
      test $VERSION_ID = "7" && echo "deb https://repos.influxdata.com/debian wheezy stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdb.list
      test $VERSION_ID = "8" && echo "deb https://repos.influxdata.com/debian jessie stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdb.list
      test $VERSION_ID = "9" && echo "deb https://repos.influxdata.com/debian stretch stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdb.list
      test $VERSION_ID = "10" && echo "deb https://repos.influxdata.com/debian buster stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdb.list
       
  2. To install and start the Telegraf service, run the following commands in a terminal window:

    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install telegraf
    sudo service telegraf start

    Or, if your operating system uses systemd (Ubuntu 15.04+, Debian 8+):

    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install telegraf
    sudo systemctl start telegraf

Manually install Telegraf on Debian from a .deb file

To manually install the Debian package from a .deb file:

  1. Download the latest Telegraf .deb release from the Telegraf section of the downloads page.
  2. Run the following command (making sure to supply the correct version number for the downloaded file):

    sudo dpkg -i telegraf_1.<version>_amd64.deb

Install Telegraf on Windows

Telegraf has native support for running as a Windows service. For additional information, see the Influx blog post Using Telegraf on Windows.

  1. Launch PowerShell as an administrator.
  2. Download the Telegraf binary from the Telegraf section of the downloads page and unzip its contents to C:\Program Files\InfluxData\Telegraf. The InfluxData GitHub repositiory provides a list of all available releases.
    You can also use the following Invoke-WebRequest PowerShell command with a specific Telegraf version (1.80.0 in this example):
    > Invoke-WebRequest https://dl.influxdata.com/telegraf/releases/telegraf-1.80.0_windows_amd64.zip -OutFile telegraf.zip
  3. In PowerShell, run these commands:
    > cd "C:\Program Files\InfluxData\Telegraf"
    > .\telegraf.exe --service install --config "C:\Program Files\InfluxData\Telegraf\telegraf.conf"
  4. To test that the installation works, run:
    > C:\"Program Files"\InfluxData\Telegraf\telegraf.exe --config C:\"Program Files"\InfluxData\Telegraf\telegraf.conf --test
  5. To start collecting data, run:
    telegraf.exe --service start
Windows service logging and troubleshooting

When Telegraf runs as a Windows service, Telegraf logs messages to Windows event logs. If the Telegraf service fails to start, view error logs by selecting Event Viewer > Windows Logs > Application.

Windows service commands
Command Description
telegraf.exe --service install   Install telegraf as a service
telegraf.exe --service uninstall Remove the telegraf service
telegraf.exe --service start     Start the telegraf service
telegraf.exe --service stop Stop the telegraf service

Install Telegraf in a Kubernetes environment

This section documents the steps for setting up Telegraf in a Kubernetes environment. Due to the dynamic nature of Kubernetes, we use the Telegraf Operator. 

  1. First you need to set up Sumo Logic’s Kubernetes collection. 
    • If you have not set up Sumo Logic’s Kubernetes collection, perform these steps: follow these steps to set up  Kubernetes collection.
    • If you have already set up Kubernetes collection, you can upgrade to the latest version and enable the Telegraf Operator.
      helm upgrade ... --set telegraf-operator.enabled=true ... 
  2. After the Telegraf Operator pod is ready, add the following annotations to the pods from which you want to collect metrics.
    telegraf.influxdata.com/inputs: |+
           # Here goes telegraf configuration for scrapping metrics
    (nginx example)
            [[inputs.nginx]]
                   urls = ["http://localhost:8080/stub_status"]
    telegraf.influxdata.com/class: sumologic-prometheus  # points to predefined output configuration (exposing metrics to prometheus, so metadata enrichment can be performed)
    prometheus.io/scrape: "true"  # Enable scrapping metrics by prometheus
    prometheus.io/port: "9273"    # Defines from which port prometheus should scrape metrics

For more details and examples, see Configure Telegraf Input Plugins. 

Configuring Telegraf

Telegraf supports a number of configuration options. Below is a summary of some of the most common ones. For the complete list, see Telegraf documentation.

Adjust the collection interval

You can adjust the collection and reporting intervals in the [agent] block of your Telegraf configuration. The scraping interval is configured with the interval property, and the flush_interval property specifies the interval at which the data will be sent to configured outputs. Specify durations by combining an integer value and time unit as a string value. Valid time units are ns, us (or µs), ms, s, m, h. The default is 10 seconds. The following example collects and send metrics to Sumo Logic every 30 seconds.

[agent]
  interval = "30s"
  flush_interval = "30s"

Add additional metadata

You may wish to add additional metadata to the metrics that Telegraf collects. You can do so with Global Tags. Global tags can be specified in the [global_tags] table in key="value" format. All metrics that are collected will be tagged with the specified tags.

[global_tags]
  dc = "us-east-1"