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 8086 is used for client-server communication over InfluxDB’s HTTP API
• TCP port 8088 is used for the RPC service for backup and restore

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.

NTP

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

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

The system has internal defaults for every configuration file setting. View the default configuration settings with the influxd config command.

Most of the settings in the local configuration file (/etc/influxdb/influxdb.conf) are commented out; all commented-out settings will be determined by the internal defaults. Any uncommented settings in the local configuration file override the internal defaults. Note that the local configuration file does not need to include every configuration setting.

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 /etc/influxdb/influxdb.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
  /etc/influxdb/influxdb.conf
  
  influxd
  

InfluxDB first checks for the -config option and then for the environment variable.

See the Configuration documentation for more information.

Data & WAL Directory Permissions

Make sure the directories in which data and the write ahead log (WAL) are stored are writable for the user running the influxd process. If these directories are not writable, influxd will not start. Information about data and wal directory paths is available in the Configuration documentation.

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 R4 class of machines, as they provide more memory than either of the C3/C4 class and the M4 class.

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