Docker Image for Graphite & Statsd

Get Graphite & Statsd running instantly

Graphite & Statsd can be complex to setup. This image will have you running & collecting stats in just a few minutes.

Quick Start

sudo docker run -d \
  --name graphite \
  -p 80:80 \
  -p 2003:2003 \
  -p 8125:8125/udp \
  hopsoft/graphite-statsd

This starts a Docker container named: graphite

That's it, you're done ... almost.

Includes the following components

• Nginx - reverse proxies the graphite dashboard
• Graphite - front-end dashboard
• Carbon - back-end
• Statsd - UDP based back-end proxy

Mapped Ports

Host	Container	Service
80	80	nginx
2003	2003	carbon
8125	8125	statsd

Mounted Volumes

Host	Container	Notes
DOCKER ASSIGNED	/opt/graphite	graphite config & stats storage
DOCKER ASSIGNED	/etc/nginx	nginx config
DOCKER ASSIGNED	/opt/statsd	statsd config
DOCKER ASSIGNED	/etc/logrotate.d	logrotate config
DOCKER ASSIGNED	/var/log	log files

Base Image

Built using Phusion's base image.

• All Graphite related processes are run as daemons & monitored with runit.
• Includes additional services such as logrotate.

Start Using Graphite & Statsd

Send Some Stats

Let's fake some stats with a random counter to prove things are working.

while true
do
  echo -n "example.statsd.counter.changed:$(((RANDOM % 10) + 1))|c" | nc -w 1 -u localhost 8125
done
<CTL-C>

Visualize the Data

Open Graphite in a browser at http://localhost/dashboard.

Secure the Django Admin

Update the default Django admin user account. The default is insecure.

• username: root
• password: root
• email: [email protected]

First login at: http://localhost/account/login Then update the root user's profile at: http://localhost/admin/auth/user/1/

Change the Configuration

The image contains a set of default configuration files: https://github.com/hopsoft/docker-graphite-statsd/tree/master/conf

If we want to make changes to these configuration files, we have two options:

Change the configuration of a running container

1. Stop the container docker stop graphite.
2. Find the configuration files on the host by inspecting the container docker inspect graphite.
3. Update the desired config files. Note: If the config files are updated by the image, you need to change them in /conf-default and not in the target destination (like /opt/graphite...)
4. Restart the container docker start graphite.

Note: If you change settings in /opt/graphite/conf/storage-schemas.conf be sure to delete the old whisper files under /opt/graphite/storage/whisper/.

Supply custom config files in a volume

The image contains a volume /conf-custom that will be scanned for configuration files. If files exist, they will replace any default files contained in the image. Note that the path of the file needs to correspond to the path of the default config files in the image (check out https://github.com/hopsoft/docker-graphite-statsd/tree/master/conf). An example:

1. Create a config directory in the host, e.g. mkdir /myConf
2. Add the config files that we want to overwrite, e.g. mkdir /myConf/graphite; vi /myConf/graphite/storage-schemas.conf
3. Run the container with the /config-custom volume mounted: sudo docker run -d --name graphite -v /myConf:/conf-custom hopsoft/graphite-statsd
4. The init scripts will automatically replace the storage-schemas.conf config file with our custom config file

Custom config files can also be changed (or added) for a running container. In this case, we need to restart the container: sudo docker restart graphite

---

Read up on Graphite's post-install tasks. Focus on the storage-schemas.conf

Important: Ensure your Statsd flush interval is at least as long as the highest-resolution retention. For example, if /opt/statsd/config.js looks like this.

flushInterval: 10000

Ensure that storage-schemas.conf retentions are no finer grained than 10 seconds.

[all]
pattern = .*
retentions = 5s:12h # WRONG
retentions = 10s:12h # OK
retentions = 60s:12h # OK

A Note on Disk Space

If running this image on cloud infrastructure such as AWS, you should consider mounting /opt/graphite & /var/log on a larger volume.

1. Configure the host to mount a large EBS volume.

2. Specify the volume mounts when starting the container.

   sudo docker run -d \
     --name graphite \
     -v /path/to/ebs/graphite:/opt/graphite \
     -v /path/to/ebs/log:/var/log \
     -p 80:80 \
     -p 2003:2003 \
     -p 8125:8125/udp \
     hopsoft/graphite-statsd
   

Additional Reading

• Introduction to Docker
• Official Statsd Documentation
• Practical Guide to StatsD/Graphite Monitoring
• Configuring Graphite for StatsD

Contributors

Build the image yourself.

OSX

1. git clone https://github.com/hopsoft/docker-graphite-statsd.git
2. cd docker-graphite-statsd
3. vagrant up
4. vagrant ssh
5. sudo docker build -t hopsoft/graphite-statsd /vagrant

Note: Pay attention to the forwarded ports in the Vagrantfile.

Linux

1. git clone https://github.com/hopsoft/docker-graphite-statsd.git
2. sudo docker build -t hopsoft/graphite-statsd ./docker-graphite-statsd