Monitoring with Graphite

Chapter 1. What Is Graphite?

This book is about monitoring with Graphite. One of my goals in teaching users how to use Graphite effectively is not just how to monitor “better,” but how to store and retrieve data in a way that helps us manage risk, predict capacity shortfalls, and align our IT strategy with the overarching business needs of the organization. Monitoring with Graphite trains us to be able to answer more pertinent questions than, “Is my server alive?” We should be able to quickly ascertain: “Are customers suffering a degraded experience?”, “How has our sales team performed over the last quarter?”, and “Do we have enough capacity to absorb a Reddit front-page posting?”

Virtually every activity we perform can be measured and analyzed. Weather forecasters use climactic data to predict changes in temperature, barometric pressure, and wind speed. Sports statisticians analyze trends by players and teams to identify the most productive athletes and most effective coaching strategies. Fans of the Adventure Time with Finn and Jake show record the number of times that Lumpy Space Princess utters “oh my Glob” in a single season. And most important to us (I hope), software engineers and systems administrators use telemetry—recorded measurements—to measure the effectiveness of their system designs and deployments.

What Is Telemetry?

Telemetry refers to the collection of measurements, typically of remote instruments, for the purposes of monitoring. The word itself has Greek origins: ...