Step 1 - Cluster Installation

This is archived documentation for InfluxData product versions that are no longer maintained. For newer documentation, see the latest InfluxData documentation.

InfluxEnterprise offers highly scalable clusters on your infrastructure and a management UI for working with clusters. The QuickStart Installation process will get you up and running with your InfluxEnterprise cluster.

The QuickStart Installation process is not designed for use in a production environment. Follow the instructions outlined in the Production Installation section if you wish to use InfluxEnterprise in a production environment. Please note that if you install InfluxEnterprise with the QuickStart Installation process you will need to reinstall InfluxEnterprise with the Production Installation process before using the product in a production environment.

Setup Description and Requirements

Setup Description

The QuickStart Installation process sets up an InfluxEnterprise cluster on three servers. Each server is a meta node and a data node, that is, each server runs both the meta service and the data service.

Requirements

License Key or File

InfluxEnterprise requires a license key OR a license file to run. Your license key is available at InfluxPortal. Contact support at the email we provided at signup to receive a license file. License files are required only if the nodes in your cluster cannot reach portal.influxdata.com on port 80 or 443.

Networking

Meta nodes and data nodes communicate over ports 8088, 8089, and 8091.

For licensing purposes, meta nodes and data nodes must also be able to reach portal.influxdata.com on port 80 or 443. If the nodes cannot reach portal.influxdata.com on port 80 or 443, you’ll need to set the license-path setting instead of the license-key setting in the meta node and data node configuration files.

Load Balancer

InfluxEnterprise does not function as a load balancer. You will need to configure your own load balancer to send client traffic to the data nodes on port 8086 (the default port for the HTTP API).

Step 1: Modify the /etc/hosts file

Add your three servers’ hostnames and IP addresses to each server’s /etc/hosts file (the hostnames are representative):

<Server_1_IP> quickstart-cluster-01
<Server_2_IP> quickstart-cluster-02
<Server_3_IP> quickstart-cluster-03

Verification steps:

Before proceeding with the installation, verify on each server that the other servers are resolvable. Here is an example set of shell commands using ping:

ping -qc 1 quickstart-cluster-01
ping -qc 1 quickstart-cluster-02
ping -qc 1 quickstart-cluster-03

If there are any connectivity issues please resolve them before proceeding with the installation. A healthy cluster requires that every meta node and data node can communicate with every other meta node and data node.

Step 2: Set up the Meta Nodes

Perform the following steps on all three servers.

I. Download and Install the Meta Service

Download:

wget https://dl.influxdata.com/enterprise/releases/influxdb-meta_1.1.5-c1.1.5_amd64.deb

Install:

sudo dpkg -i influxdb-meta_1.1.5-c1.1.5_amd64.deb

Download:

wget https://dl.influxdata.com/enterprise/releases/influxdb-meta-1.1.5_c1.1.5.x86_64.rpm

Install:

sudo yum localinstall influxdb-meta-1.1.5_c1.1.5.x86_64.rpm

II. Edit the Meta Service Configuration File

In /etc/influxdb/influxdb-meta.conf, set:

  • hostname to the full hostname of the meta node
  • registration-enabled in the [enterprise] section to true
  • registration-server-url in the [enterprise] section to the full URL of the server that will run the InfluxEnterprise web console. You must fully specify the protocol, IP or hostname, and port. Entering the IP or hostname alone will lead to errors.
  • license-key in the [enterprise] section to the license key you received on InfluxPortal OR license-path in the [enterprise] section to the local path to the JSON license file you received from InfluxData. The license-key and license-path settings are mutually exclusive and one must remain set to the empty string.

    # Hostname advertised by this host for remote addresses.  This must be resolvable by all
    # other nodes in the cluster
    hostname="<quickstart-cluster-0x>"
    
    [enterprise]
    # Must be set to true to use the Enterprise Web UI
    registration-enabled = true
    
    # Must include the protocol (http://)
    registration-server-url = "http://<web-console-server-IP>:3000"
    
    # license-key and license-path are mutually exclusive, use only one and leave the other blank
    license-key = "<your_license_key>" # Mutually exclusive with license-path
    
    # license-key and license-path are mutually exclusive, use only one and leave the other blank
    license-path = "/path/to/readable/JSON.license.file" # Mutually exclusive with license-key

III. Start the Meta Service

On sysvinit systems, enter:

service influxdb-meta start

On systemd systems, enter:

sudo systemctl start influxdb-meta

Verification steps:

Check to see that the process is running by entering:

ps aux | grep -v grep | grep influxdb-meta

You should see output similar to:

influxdb  3207  0.8  4.4 483000 22168 ?        Ssl  17:05   0:08 /usr/bin/influxd-meta -config /etc/influxdb/influxdb-meta.conf

Step 3: Set up the Data Nodes

Perform the following steps on all three servers.

I. Download and Install the Data Service

Download:

wget https://dl.influxdata.com/enterprise/releases/influxdb-data_1.1.5-c1.1.5_amd64.deb

Install:

sudo dpkg -i influxdb-data_1.1.5-c1.1.5_amd64.deb

Download:

wget https://dl.influxdata.com/enterprise/releases/influxdb-data-1.1.5_c1.1.5.x86_64.rpm

Install:

sudo yum localinstall influxdb-data-1.1.5_c1.1.5.x86_64.rpm

II. Edit the Data Service Configuration File

First, in /etc/influxdb/influxdb.conf, uncomment:

  • hostname at the top of the file and set it to the full hostname of the data node
  • the header of the [http] section
  • auth-enabled in the [http] section and set it to true
  • shared-secret in the [http] section and set it to a long pass phrase that will be used to sign tokens for intra-cluster communication. The Enterprise Web console requires this to be consistent across all data nodes.

Second, in /etc/influxdb/influxdb.conf, set:

license-key in the [enterprise] section to the license key you received on InfluxPortal OR license-path in the [enterprise] section to the local path to the JSON license file you received from InfluxData. The license-key and license-path settings are mutually exclusive and one must remain set to the empty string.

# Change this option to true to disable reporting.
# reporting-disabled = false
# bind-address = ":8088"
hostname="<quickstart-cluster-0x>"

[enterprise]
  registration-enabled = false

  registration-server-url = ""

  # license-key and license-path are mutually exclusive, use only one and leave the other blank
  license-key = "<your_license_key>" # Mutually exclusive with license-path

  # The path to a valid license file.  license-key and license-path are mutually exclusive,
  # use only one and leave the other blank.
  license-path = "/path/to/readable/JSON.license.file" # Mutually exclusive with license-key

[meta]
  # Where the cluster metadata is stored
  dir = "/var/lib/influxdb/meta" # data nodes do require a local meta directory

[...]

[http]
  # Determines whether HTTP endpoint is enabled.
  # enabled = true

  # The bind address used by the HTTP service.
  # bind-address = ":8086"

  # Determines whether HTTP authentication is enabled.
  auth-enabled = true # Recommended, but not required

[...]

  # The JWT auth shared secret to validate requests using JSON web tokens.
  shared-secret = "long pass phrase used for signing tokens"

III. Start the Data Service

On sysvinit systems, enter:

service influxdb start

On systemd systems, enter:

sudo systemctl start influxdb

Verification steps:

Check to see that the process is running by entering:

ps aux | grep -v grep | grep influxdb

You should see output similar to:

influxdb  2706  0.2  7.0 571008 35376 ?        Sl   15:37   0:16 /usr/bin/influxd -config /etc/influxdb/influxdb.conf

If you do not see the expected output, the process is either not launching or is exiting prematurely. Check the logs for error messages and verify the previous setup steps are complete.

Step 4: Join the Nodes to the Cluster

I. Join the first Server to the Cluster

On the first server (quickstart-cluster-01), join its meta node and data node to the cluster by entering:

influxd-ctl join

The expected output is:

Joining meta node at localhost:8091
Searching for meta node on quickstart-cluster-01:8091...
Searching for data node on quickstart-cluster-01:8088...

Successfully created cluster

  * Added meta node 1 at quickstart-cluster-01:8091
  * Added data node 2 at quickstart-cluster-01:8088

  To join additional nodes to this cluster, run the following command:

  influxd-ctl join quickstart-cluster-01:8091

II. Join the second Server to the Cluster

On the second server (quickstart-cluster-02), join its meta node and data node to the cluster by entering:

influxd-ctl join quickstart-cluster-01:8091

The expected output is:

Joining meta node at quickstart-cluster-01:8091
Searching for meta node on quickstart-cluster-02:8091...
Searching for data node on quickstart-cluster-02:8088...

Successfully joined cluster

  * Added meta node 3 at quickstart-cluster-02:8091
  * Added data node 4 at quickstart-cluster-02:8088

III. Join the third Server to the Cluster

On the third server (quickstart-cluster-03), join its meta node and data node to the cluster by entering:

influxd-ctl join quickstart-cluster-01:8091

The expected output is:

Joining meta node at quickstart-cluster-01:8091
Searching for meta node on quickstart-cluster-03:8091...
Searching for data node on quickstart-cluster-03:8088...

Successfully joined cluster

  * Added meta node 5 at quickstart-cluster-03:8091
  * Added data node 6 at quickstart-cluster-03:8088

IV. Verify your Cluster

On any server, enter:

influxd-ctl show

The expected output is:

Data Nodes
==========
ID   TCP Address                  Version
2    quickstart-cluster-01:8088   1.1.5-c1.1.5rc1
4    quickstart-cluster-02:8088   1.1.5-c1.1.5rc1
6    quickstart-cluster-03:8088   1.1.5-c1.1.5rc1

Meta Nodes
==========
TCP Address                  Version
quickstart-cluster-01:8091   1.1.5-c1.1.5rc1
quickstart-cluster-02:8091   1.1.5-c1.1.5rc1
quickstart-cluster-03:8091   1.1.5-c1.1.5rc1

Your cluster should have three data nodes and three meta nodes. If you do not see your meta or data nodes in the output, please retry adding them to the cluster.

Once all of your nodes are joined to the cluster, move on to the next step in the QuickStart Installation to set up the InfluxEnterprise web console.