Installation

This page provides directions for installing, starting, and configuring InfluxDB.

Requirements

Installation of the InfluxDB package may require root or administrator privileges in order to complete successfully.

Networking

By default, InfluxDB uses the following network ports:

• TCP port 8083 is used for InfluxDB’s Admin panel
• TCP port 8086 is used for client-server communication over InfluxDB’s HTTP API

In addition to the ports above, InfluxDB also offers multiple plugins that may require custom ports. All port mappings can be modified through the configuration file, which is located at /etc/influxdb/influxdb.conf for default installations.

Installation

For users who don’t want to install any software and are ready to use InfluxDB, you may want to check out our managed hosted InfluxDB offering.

curl -sL https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdata-archive_compat.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

curl -sL https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdata-archive_compat.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

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

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

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/influxdb.repo
[influxdb]
name = InfluxDB Repository - RHEL \$releasever
baseurl = https://repos.influxdata.com/rhel/\$releasever/\$basearch/stable
enabled = 1
gpgcheck = 1
gpgkey = https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdata-archive_compat.key
EOF

sudo yum install influxdb
sudo service influxdb start

sudo yum install influxdb
sudo systemctl start influxdb

# add go repository
zypper ar -f obs://devel:languages:go/ go
# install latest influxdb
zypper in influxdb

sudo pkg install influxdb

sudo service influxd onestart

brew update
brew install influxdb

ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/influxdb/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.influxdb.plist

influxd -config /usr/local/etc/influxdb.conf

Configuration

For non-packaged installations, it is a best practice to generate a new configuration for each upgrade to ensure you have the latest features and settings. Any changes made in the old file will need to be manually ported to the newly generated file. Packaged installations will come with a configuration pre-installed, so this step may not be needed if you installed InfluxDB using a package manager (though it is handy to know either way).

Note: Newly generated configuration files have no knowledge of any local customizations or settings. Please make sure to double-check any configuration changes prior to deploying them.

To generate a new configuration file run the following command and edit the influxdb.generated.conf file to have the desired configuration settings:

influxd config > influxdb.generated.conf

There are two ways to launch InfluxDB with your configuration file:

• Point the process to the correct configuration file by using the -config option:

  influxd -config influxdb.generated.conf

• Set the environment variable INFLUXDB_CONFIG_PATH to the path of your configuration file and start the process. For example:

  echo $INFLUXDB_CONFIG_PATH
  /root/influxdb.generated.conf
  
  influxd
  

InfluxDB first checks for the -config option and then for the environment variable. If you do not supply a configuration file, InfluxDB uses an internal default configuration (equivalent to the output of influxd config).

Note: The influxd command has two similarly named flags. The config flag prints a generated default configuration file to STDOUT but does not launch the influxd process. The -config flag takes a single argument, which is the path to the InfluxDB configuration file to use when launching the process.

The config and -config flags can be combined to output the union of the internal default configuration and the configuration file passed to -config. The options specified in the configuration file will overwrite any internally generated configuration.

influxd config -config /etc/influxdb/influxdb.partial.conf

The output will show every option configured in the influxdb.partial.conf file and will substitute internal defaults for any configuration options not specified in that file.

The example configuration file shipped with the installer is for information only. It is an identical file to the internally generated configuration except that the example file has comments.

Hosting on AWS

Hardware

We recommend using two SSD volumes. One for the influxdb/wal and one for the influxdb/data. Depending on your load each volume should have around 1k-3k provisioned IOPS. The influxdb/data volume should have more disk space with lower IOPS and the influxdb/wal volume should have less disk space with higher IOPS.

Each machine should have a minimum of 8G RAM.

We’ve seen the best performance with the C3 class of machines.

Configuring the Instance

This example assumes that you are using two SSD volumes and that you have mounted them appropriately. This example also assumes that each of those volumes is mounted at /mnt/influx and /mnt/db. For more information on how to do that see the Amazon documentation on how to Add a Volume to Your Instance.

Config File

You’ll have to update the config file appropriately for each InfluxDB instance you have.

...

[meta]
  dir = "/mnt/db/meta"
  ...

...

[data]
  dir = "/mnt/db/data"
  ...
wal-dir = "/mnt/influx/wal"
  ...

...

[hinted-handoff]
    ...
dir = "/mnt/db/hh"
    ...

Permissions

When using non-standard directories for InfluxDB data and configurations, also be sure to set filesystem permissions correctly:

chown influxdb:influxdb /mnt/influx
chown influxdb:influxdb /mnt/db