Use Chronograf

Chronograf is a data visualization and dashboarding tool designed to visualize data in InfluxDB 1.x using the InfluxQL query language. This page walks through how to use Chronograf with InfluxDB Clustered.

Download and install Chronograf

If you haven’t already, download and install Chronograf.

Create an InfluxDB connection

1. In Chronograf, click Configuration in the left navigation bar, and then click Add Connection.

2. Enter your InfluxDB Clustered connection credentials:

   • Connection URL: InfluxDB cluster URL

     https://cluster-host.com
     

   • Connection Name: Name to uniquely identify this connection configuration

   • Username: Arbitrary string (ignored, but cannot be empty)

   • Password: InfluxDB database token with read permissions on the database you want to query

   • Telegraf Database Name: InfluxDB database Chronograf uses to populate parts of the application, including the Host List page (default is telegraf)

   • Default Retention Policy: Default retention policy (leave blank)

     DBRPs map to InfluxDB databases

     In InfluxDB Clustered, databases and retention-policies (DBRPs) are no longer separate entities in the data model. Rather than having one or more retention policies, an InfluxDB Clustered database has a retention period, which defines the maximum age of data to retain in the database. InfluxQL queries still assume the 1.x DBRP convention, but with InfluxDB Clustered, InfluxQL queries are mapped to databases using the database-name/retention-policy naming convention. For example:

     SELECT * FROM mydb.autogen.measurement
     

     This query is routed to the InfluxDB Clustered database with the name mydb/autogen.

3. Click Add Connection.

4. Select the dashboards you would like to create, and then click Next.

5. To configure a Kapacitor connection, provide the necessary credentials, and then click Continue. Otherwise, click Skip.

6. Click Finish.

Query data in the Data Explorer

1. In Chronograf, click Explore in the left navigation bar.
2. Build and submit InfluxQL queries.

-- Fully-qualified measurement
SELECT * FROM "db-name"."rp-name"."measurement-name"

-- Fully-qualified measurement shorthand (use the default retention policy)
SELECT * FROM "db-name".."measurement-name"

Important notes

• No administrative functionality
• Limited InfluxQL feature support

No administrative functionality

Chronograf cannot be used for administrative tasks in InfluxDB Clustered. For example, you cannot do the following:

• Define databases
• Modify retention policies
• Add users
• Kill queries

When connected to an InfluxDB Clustered database, functionality in the InfluxDB Admin section of Chronograf is disabled.

To complete administrative tasks, use the influxctl CLI.

Limited InfluxQL feature support

InfluxQL is being rearchitected to work with the InfluxDB v3 storage engine. This process is ongoing and some InfluxQL features are still being implemented. For information about the current implementation status of InfluxQL features, see InfluxQL feature support.